This Is How Johnnie Walker Made the World’s Lightest Whiskey Bottle

Tradition dictates that to enjoy a premium whiskey you pour it from an elaborate chunky crystal decanter into a lightweight tumbler.

Weight has long been an external indicator of quality in the whiskey industry, and the luxury industry in general, but this week Johnnie Walker launched the world’s lightest glass whiskey bottle, suggesting the future may be more about in cutting emissions that break glass.

At 180 grams (6.35 ounces), the teardrop-shaped 70-centiliter glass bottle is lighter than the 850 grams of the current Johnnie Walker Blue Label bottle (without liquid and the cap), which comes in at a fifth of the usual weight. . It contains limited edition Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ultra whisky. The design has been five years in the making, and it breaks with the brand’s traditional square bottle for the first time.

Designed with the help of Turkish glassmakers Şişecam—a company among the world’s top five glass producers—the new lightweight bottle has the potential to impact both transport and production emissions. Parent company Diageo suggests that for every gram of glass reduced, around half a gram of carbon is saved in production. It’s not impressive, but since Johnnie Walker sells an estimated 130 million bottles annually, the carbon savings can be significant, if added up.

Because it cannot stand on its own, the tear drop bottle is placed in a bamboo cage.

For now, however, only 888 bottles of the record-breaking Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ultra whiskey will be released, priced at $1,250 each—which, as eco-statements go, is pretty tokenistic. Limited-edition spirit releases are common in the premium sector, but for this innovation to have a significant impact, it will need to be implemented across more Diageo brands.

Currently, the lightweight bottles can’t be enlarged, but Jeremy Lindley, global design director at Diageo, told WIRED that the company is already applying its newfound knowledge of light-weighting to other bottle. “We’ve reduced the weight of Johnnie Walker 18-year-old by 35 percent, and we’re working to reduce the weight of our standard bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label by more than 25 percent,” Lindley said.

In the development process for Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ultra, Diageo was granted four UK patents, and, in a commendable move, the license was made available royalty-free to help encourage other brands of drink to change.