As shipping in large containers gains popularity, bulk wine is shedding the stereotype of being cheap. Lizzy O’Riordan explores the emerging premium bulk landscape.

Standing in the Greencroft Bottling facility, the first thing that strikes me is the precision. Donned in a bright orange safety jacket and a hair net, I’m visiting Greencroft in County Durham to speak with Alan Armstrong, director of quality. Surrounded by apparatus, Armstrong walks me through the process of bottling bulk wine.

As the machinery thuds behind us, he explains how empty bottles are inverted and blown with sterile air to create an oxygen-free environment. Then, once filled, they are injected with nitrogen in the neck space – again, an oxygen preventative.

By the time we reach the end of the conveyor belt, the bottles have been sampled, labelled, cased and arranged on the pallets. It’s a system that appears foolproof and I’m left pondering how outdated it seems to associate bulk wine with cheapness and lack of care.

The reputation of bulk wine is evolving, though. Once limited to inexpensive and possibly uninteresting wines, now producers are sending premium products to be bottled in the country of sale.

Lanchester Wines, part of the same group as Greencroft, has embraced this by trademarking the term Boutique Bulk. Lesley Cook, director of purchasing, says this is to move away from the misconception that bulk wine is cheap or lower quality. “We decided to trademark Boutique Bulk to give it a bit of a step up,” she says.

Rebecca Vernon, head of retail at Lanchester, adds that the differentiation between bulk and Boutique Bulk is not about bottling quality. “It’s more associations of small, niche parcels – maybe some quirkier varieties and regions, or anything a little bit more expensive.”

Elsewhere in the wine world, sentiments are similar. “We certainly don’t automatically think of bulk as basic,” says Simon Mason, head of wine sustainability & due diligence at The Wine Society. “There is no reason why more premium wines can’t be shipped in bulk and still preserve their characteristics.”

Paul Braydon, head of wine development at Kingsland Drinks, agrees. “In the past 12 months we have imported the most expensive wine we have ever purchased for bottling at our plant in Salford for a retailer own-label wine selling at £12.99 per bottle, so the trust in the quality is there.”

Chris Borman, winemaker at glass manufacturer and bottler Encirc, mirrors this: “Bulk shipping wine is being seen as an increasingly viable option for our customers and we’re now regularly bottling wines around the £15 price point, which to many consumers is a higher-end wine.”

But why is bulk’s reputation changing? According to Lanchester’s Cook, culture shifts play a role, “a lot of the obvious snobbery has gone out of the wine world”, which makes bulk more acceptable.

For Rodolphe Lameyse, chief executive of Vinexposium, which organises the World Bulk Wine Exhibition, the primary factor for the rise in premium bulk is environmental. “Bulk wine is seen to meet increasingly strict environmental standards.”

The most common theory, however, is that trust in the process has grown.

Borman says: “With modern practices, wine that is shipped in bulk and properly finished in market will deliver the exact same product as when bottled at source.” Greencroft’s Armstrong adds: “There is a confidence in the quality systems that are in place in the UK.”

PRODUCTION ISSUES

Despite its benefits, bulk wine is not without its challenges. These, Armstrong says, largely arise upon arrival.

According to Armstrong, there are two main issues. First, in extreme cold weather “the colloidal matter or colouring can drop out of the wine”, which is then fixed at Greencroft by passing the product through a heat exchanger.

Second, if the wine hasn’t been loaded in a sterile way and yeast and bacteria get in, it can cause severe issues where the wine starts to ferment en route.

Armstrong says this is, however, rare. It’s even rarer to have to discard the wine. “We’ve done north of 100 million litres this year. We might need to discard two tanks,” Armstrong says.

Actually, the primary issue for premium bulk is logistical, says Mason. “A large flexitank of some of these lines would be a challenge for us to manage logistically and financially.” This is because the rate of sale of more expensive wine is lower, which means storage needs to be considered more carefully.

Armstrong reveals there are experiments to solve this issue. He says: “One of the things that’s being pushed right now is smaller flexibags, where multiple bags can be put in one container.” This would mean smaller amounts of premium wine could still travel in bulk.

REGIONAL RESTRICTIONS

Appellation restrictions also pose a barrier to premium bulk wine. Kingsland’s Braydon says: “There are some PDOs or regions where bottling outside of the region is not permitted.” He notes Champagne and Rioja as examples.

Likewise, Mason at The Wine Society comments: “We list several own-label wines from Alsace and would love to bulk ship.” But restrictions prevent that.

There are, however, rumblings of change. Mason says: “Organisations such as the Sustainable Wine Roundtable are starting to engage with regional bodies (not Alsace yet) to discuss topics such as changing packaging restrictions.”

Encirc’s Borman adds that regions with surplus wine from large harvests may eventually reconsider bottling restrictions.

New World wines seem the most likely to change. Already, “post-Brexit we have seen trade deals with the likes of Australia and New Zealand that should ease regulations and restrictions around bottling in market”, says Braydon.

Borman adds: “We’ve seen some retailers shipping wine from New Zealand to the UK in bulk to deliver higher-quality wines at more affordable prices for consumers.”

For many, therefore, it seems inevitable that premium bulk wine will only continue to increase in popularity. As Lanchester’s Cook says, the end consumer largely isn’t concerned with how their product is bottled – they just want a high-quality drink.

Lameyse at Vinexposium explains that already “40% of the UK’s wine imports arrive in bulk”, and with all the associated benefits, it’s likely this figure will continue to rise. As I take off my high-vis and scrunch up my hair net, I’m prone to agree.