Cotswold Hills, the Royal Agricultural University’s award-winning wine and social enterprise based in Gloucestershire, has become the first UK vineyard to trial the use of Packamama’s multi-award-winning flat wine bottles.

A small run of the 2021 English white wine will be available in the new sustainable eco-flat bottles as part of an ongoing, student-led, project undertaken at the Royal Agricultural University (RAU) and a celebration of how collaboration in the English wine industry can help create a more sustainable future.

A core premise of the project is to give students the opportunity to gain first-hand enterprise and employability skills, learning about vineyard management, grape varieties, wine production, marketing and finances.

Hugo Sain-Ley-Berry-Gray, the RAU’s student lead on the project who is studying for a degree in Applied Farm Management at the Cirencester university, said: “As students of food and agriculture, we are conscious of the carbon footprint associated with the industry. For the wine sector, glass bottles account for a high percentage of these emissions.

“Eco-flat wine bottles offer Cotswold Hills a product that aligns with our sustainability objectives. Reducing the weight and changing the material of our bottles is a step in the right direction to solve an existing problem. As new entrants into the industry, this was an opportunity we were keen to explore.

“Packamama’s eco-flat wine bottles provide an exciting opportunity to innovate and reduce the emissions of our product. Being the UK’s first vineyard to trial this format is exciting and we hope to inspire others to explore this option.” 

 Keen to support the next generation of the UK wine industry, Packamama provided their Suffolk-produced, 100% recycled PET bottles for the project. Thanks to space, weight, and energy savings, Packamama’s innovative packaging format enables emissions savings of around 50% compared to typical, round, glass bottles.

Judith Candy, Business Development Manager at Packamama, said: “The students involved in this project at the RAU represent a generation of eco-conscious young people who will not accept high carbon footprint products given the climate crisis.

“As such, it has been a pleasure to support their endeavours in creating a local and sustainable product through supplying our lower carbon footprint bottles. As a British start-up, it is also very motivating to see our Packamama format used for an English wine for the first time and we hope it is the start of a long-lasting collaboration.”

 Katherine Duke, Head of Enterprise & Employability at the RAU, said: “This is an incredible project and we, at the RAU, are really excited to be the first English wine producer to use these new eco-flat bottles.

 “We are thrilled to be launching these in the run up to Christmas as, not only are these bottles better for the environment, their innovative flat design is ideal for online gift purchasing as they can be posted through a standard letterbox.”