If a wine bottle feels lighter than usual, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re getting less wine. In fact, there’s a fair chance it’s the glass bottle itself that’s losing the grams. It’s called ‘lightweighting’, which in the wine industry, refers to the use of lightweight glass to reduce the carbon footprint of wine bottle production. Producing glass wine bottles is the single largest source of carbon emissions in the wine supply chain and accounts for around 50% of an average winery’s greenhouse gas emissions. Because the more glass bottles weigh, the more they cost to produce and transport, and the higher their CO2 emissions. Glass bottles require a large amount of energy to produce, due to the high melting temperature of the materials.  Transport and packaging, some major ‘hot spots’ in the carbon cycle of Australian wine production, together represent a massive 68% of the average carbon life cycle, compared with grape growing at 15% and winemaking at 17%. Wine producers around the world have been taking up lightweighting, with Margaret River’s Pierro Wines an early adopter since 2012. The winery says lightweighting has reduced its carbon footprint by up to 44%. But rest assured, wine lovers, a lightweight bottle doesn’t mean your wine is ‘lightweight’. Despite the perception that a heavy bottle means a better wine, the weight of a wine bottle does not indicate the quality of wine inside.  Cheers to that!