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For the Rutherford Wine Company, based in St. Helena, in California’s Napa Valley, less is more — at least when it comes to bottles.
The family owned business is committed to 100% sustainable viticulture, and in that spirit, has opted to bottle its wine using light-weight glass. It’s not the kind of thing that’s discernible to the naked eye, but lighter bottles do make a difference when it comes to transport and, ultimately, energy consumption.
“That way you can fit more in a container. And they’re easier to handle, because they’re lighter. So it pulls out a lot of carbon from the supply chain”, Daniel Assef, Rutherford’s export sales manager, told The Daily.
Rutherford, founded in 1978, has been owned since 2000 by the Zaninovich family. The company sources fruit from family-owned vineyards throughout California, in areas that include Lodi, Monterrey and the Central Valley, and its portfolio includes more than a half-dozen national brands as well as a number of private labels.
The company’s base of operations continues to be the Napa Valley, where all of Rutherford’s vineyards are certified sustainable, and where it produces signature wines such as its Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, Reserve Chardonnay, and Sauvignon Blanc, all of them 100% single variety.
“We made a conscious decision to be more environmentally friendly because consumers are gravitating towards more sustainability,” Assef explained. “They’re demanding it because they see the impact of climate change and climate effects”.
