MAINZ, Germany — Janina Krick came up with the idea while she and her family were weighing ways out of the wine crisis.

German vintners are struggling, with lower yields amid climate change, rising costs and changing consumer habits.

Just developing a new Riesling or Chardonnay wasn't really going to cut it, says Krick, 29.

Analyzing the issue, she wondered whether the bottle could be the game-changer.

Could it be made more sustainably, while preserving the wine's quality and aroma?

In many countries, wine is sold in bag-in-box or Tetra Paks as well as bottles.

But most wine in Germany is sold in glass bottles, which are heavier and responsible for a large share of the carbon footprint of production.

Only around 5% of wine is sold in other types of packaging, says Dominik Durner, a professor at the Wine Campus in Neustadt an der Weinstraße and Kaiserslautern University of Applied Sciences.

But when considering a new kind of packaging for wine, you face a slew of challenges.

Wine has no best-before date, so you need to guarantee the airtightness, protection from light and safety during transport for a very long time, Durner says.

Plastic bottles are highly susceptible to oxidation. Marc Dressler, professor of business administration and entrepreneurship at the Wine Campus, has further concerns.

"Plastic can also leach substances into the wine; that is certainly not the future for wine, which is so sensitive to sensory factors."

The drawbacks of glass

"Glass bottles are not only heavy and unwieldy, CO2 consumption is also high," says Krick, who has a doctorate in marketing and consumer behaviour.

At the Wine Campus, Durner and other researchers are also studying the issue. They have found that, with an average weight of around 530 grams for a 0.75-litre single-use glass bottle, roughly half of the carbon footprint during production is attributable to the glass packaging.

Furthermore, glass bottles became much more expensive for winegrowers due to the Ukraine war.

Glass production relies heavily on natural gas, prices of which soared amid the war. Supply also contracted as Western nations distanced themselves from Russia, a leading gas producer.

Glass furnaces run continuously at extremely high temperatures to prevent molten glass from solidifying and destroying machinery. This means that when gas prices spiked, glassmakers could not simply slash their energy use, according to the Wein Plus industry website.

Few reusable systems

Some winegrowers and restaurateurs are turning to reusable systems, hoping consumers will bring back their bottles.

But widespread adoption across the industry is difficult. Virtually no bottle design is standardized, researchers note.

Many places don't have sufficient space to store empty bottles and lack a reliable washing system. On top of this come logistics costs.

German wine lovers meanwhile are unaware of these challenges, despite the nation being considered world champion of recycling.

The returnable rate for wine bottles on the German market is around 5.6%, says Durner, and that is mostly drinks retailers. "The actual figure is probably slightly higher, because many consumers return their bottles to the winery."

Plastic bottle with thin glass layer

The Kricks developed the idea of bottles made from 100% recycled plastic with a glass heart.

Their new bottles have a wafer-thin glass lining - to protect the wine from oxygen, Janina's father Jörg says.

The new bottles are made by a partner through a high-tech process.

With the new design and materials, the Kricks slashed the weight of a bottle from 450 to 50 grams.

Consumers can recycle these new plastic bottles at standard bottle return machines that can be found at every German supermarket.

The thin layer of glass dissolves during recycling. "It evaporates and is gone," Jörg Krick says.

Carbon emissions during production are only half as high as for glass bottles. In future, they will use solar power to make the bottles, making the process even more sustainable.

Krick did not say more about the production site, which is located somewhere in Germany, nor about his partner.

If consumers embrace the bottles, they could be a game-changer, says Ernst Büscher from the German Wine Institute. "The wine industry is, after all, moving increasingly towards sustainability."

Dressler is a committed fan. "We need the sustainability argument; otherwise, there will be no change."

"Innovation is absolutely vital. If you don't try anything new, you can't gain anything," says Durner. The crisis-hit wine industry must find ways to tap into new consumer groups, he says.

Wines from Rheinhessen

And the contents? "We want to bottle wines from local producers," says Jörg Krick.

They work with three Rheinhessen estates: the Wendel family’s vineyard in Bingen and neighbouring Dessoy, plus Laubenstein in Gerolsheim.

A digital sommelier called Weintoni provides information about the bottled wines via a QR code.

Sales of bottles from start-up weinton/ WNTN began online via the company's website in late 2025 - and they have won several awards since.

In the first year, the company aims to produce around 150,000 bottles, according to Jörg Krick. After 2026, the plan is to quadruple this figure every year. They aim to reach between 600,000 and 1 million next year.

Germans buy more than 2 billion bottles of wine each year. Krick says the business could win a 10% market share in the long term.

They also plan to launch a small 187-millilitre bottle for tasting or for a single glass in the evening, made exclusively from recycled plastic.

©2026 dpa GmbH. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.