When it comes to product distribution, consider ways to eliminate individual packages or serving units.

You can cut operating expenses, air pollution and waste all at once.

Three California vineyards are proving that cutting transportation costs and using recyclable containers helps them, and their customers, cut costs, boost profits and protect the environment.

It’s not green wine, it’s still red and white. But the key is in the green thinking that eliminates unnecessary packaging and maximizes recycling as a distribution and packaging advantage. It’s a new spin on an ancient tradition, pouring wine from barrels, not from glass bottles.

California’s DeLoach Vineyards has now brought that idea to fine restaurants as an eco-friendly and packaging innovation — a 10-liter barrel of wine. The barrel is a fancy repackaging of the wine-in-a-box idea that’s popular with inexpensive wines. DeLoach’s barrel contains 67 glasses of wine. The wine comes in a plastic “eco-bag” that fits into a plastic barrel. The winery sells the 10-liter refill for the price of 9 liters, so the restaurant gets seven free glasses of wine.

It’s the eco-bag that eliminates packaging waste, glass, and greenhouse gas (GHG) and other emissions related to shipping 13 bottles of wine. DeLoach calls its program “barrel-to-barrel,” and it’s popping up in a variety of upscale restaurants around the country, including:

• Vox Populi, Boston
• Indulge Wine Bar, Highlands Ranch, CO
• St. James Inn, Avila, IN
• Galleto Ristorante, Modesto, CA, and
• Sojourn, New York City.

Other vineyards are experimenting with similar packaging ideas.

In Sonoma, CA, Red Truck Wines this year introduced a mini-barrel dispenser that holds four bottles of wine. Bottom line: Red Truck cut the weight of delivered wine by 50%. The plastic barrel can be recycled, and the system dramatically cuts Red Truck’s landfill waste and GHG emissions related to producing and distributing its wine by 50%. By cutting weight in the packaging, Red Truck offers the mini-barrel at a cost of $1 a glass to give restaurants a chance for a profitable markup.

MAS Vino Wine, based in Cloverdale, CA, eliminated 70,000 glass wine bottles in three years with a reusable steel wine drum that holds the equivalent of 15 to 20 bottles of wine.

Tags: DeLoach Vineyards, GHG emissions, green companies, green wine, MAS Vino Wine, recycling, Red Truck Wines