I like to think of wine being made and bottled at the vineyard and then shipped in cases to its final destination, but this is not how some of the big boys do it at all.

Moving wine around in bulk is an expensive ugly business. On the roads fuel prices and congestion do not sit well with profits. Trans Ocean who are part of the Hillebrand group specialising in what they term as 'bulk liquid logistics' (sounds thoroughly dull), have given this some thought and have done a deal with Constellation Brands (who supply 15% of all booze drunk in the UK, are the largest wine company in the world and are unfortunately responsible for Hardys amongst a mind boggling amount of other familiar wine brands).

Part of this deal involves moving wine by train from the South East ports to Bristol, initially about 8.96 million bottles a week. These are not actually bottles though. They are VinBulk Flexitanks, more like giant wine boxes, just like the ones you buy with the silver bladder inside, except they can hold a maximum of 24000 litres which is 32000 bottles. Picture one of those on the go in your (imaginary large) kitchen, that should be enough to cover most house parties (in your area). Given the estimated 6 month shelf life of an ordinary wine box, I make that a mere 175 bottles per day to consume before it goes off.

These tanks sounds so ‘battery farmed’ and vulgar. The cold mechanics of getting mass produced drink to the 60 + million of us is really off putting. It is a practical reality though, keeping us happy pigs.

The romance would be improved in my impractical mind if the trains were actually carrying bottles of wine (preferably glass). There again I struggle to have a love affair with the big brands anyway, not through natural prejudice, but more from repeated bad experiences. I always give a bottle of wine a go, and have more often than not been disappointed in this arena.

So presumably these vats of wine arrive in a warehouse somewhere around Bristol where they are unceremoniously squirted into bottles, and labeled accordingly with exotic enticing descriptions from all over the world.

Give me a free range bottle any day.

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