Vintners get more from less in bottles

The next big thing for the wine industry could be small, screw-capped and shatterproof.

Single-serve plastic bottles are starting to show up on supermarket shelves in a bid to win over new customers by moving wine beyond posh white-tablecloth dinners to the informal ease of a picnic.

If one of these green bottles should accidentally fall, no problem.

“There’s a more active lifestyle people are living, they’d like wine to be a part of it and it just was not convenient in the 750 milliliter typical wine glass bottle where you have to bring corkscrews, glasses, etc.,” says Tom Slone, brand manager for Stone Cellars by Beringer, which has been selling four-packs of unbreakable, single-serve bottles since this summer.

The new, 187-milliliter (about six fluid ounces) bottles are part of a larger trend in the industry that includes boxed wine, cans and carton-type packages.