After decanting a bottle of 2023 Martin Ray Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast ($20) to have with our salmon this evening, the left overs of last night's 2023 Reputation Stag's Leap District Cabernet Sauvignon ($25) went into my glass as a pre-dinner tipple. Waste not, want not, right? Handling these two bottles nearly simultaneously made for an unavoidable observation: holy shit, this bottle is heavy.
Putting each bottle on the scale to quantify this confirmed my suspicion: the pinot noir bottle, including its screw cap closure, weighed-in at 15 ounces. Meanwhile, the glass scud missile the cab is bottled in crushed it at 33 ounces. And, yes, those are empty bottles.
What in the name of all that is not holy are we doing, wine people?!
Doing the long math, the difference between these two vessels is more than 750 pounds of extra weight per pallet (a pallet is 56 cases, and the standard unit for calculating shipping costs.) That 750 pounds does not ship even one more ounce of wine, while certainly increases the cost of shipping quite substantially.
More boring math: the liquid weight of a pallet of wine is approximately 1100 pounds, so a pallet of the above-referenced cabernet likely weights 67% more than a pallet of the pinot noir. That's two-thirds! Particularly in this age of wineries projecting environmental sensitivity, why?
The answer is simple: bottle weight is strongly correlated to perceived value. In other words, wineries are spending more on glass and shipping because consumers are willing to pay more for wine bottled in heavier glass.
Anyway, how are the wines themselves? They both fall into the value end of wines from their respective appellations. Sonoma Coast pinot noir can run upwards of $40, while $25 cabernet from Stag's Leap is virtually unheard of - and easily hits north of $100. The 2023 Martin Ray Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast ($20) was perfectly serviceable, though totally forgettable. The 2023 Reputation Stag's Leap District Cabernet Sauvignon ($25) on the other hand is, as one would expect, a brawler of a wine. And a pretty good introduction to SLD cabernet at a relatively-reasonable price.
I won't be buying either of these wines again, the former for its lack of redeeming qualities, the latter for its egregious and unnecessary insult to the world at large.