The focus of retailers on minimising their waste packaging has seen Waitrose become the first supermarket in the UK to announce plans to remove the sleeves from the necks of their wine bottles.

The new-look bottles will be trialled in Waitrose’s own-brand Loved & Found range, with an initial four selected bottles for sale without what is essentially a decoration. The cover serves no actual purpose, merely providing a barrier that consumers have to remove before inserting the corkscrew into their favourite tipples.

While the cover, known as a capsule, serves no actual purpose, Barry Dick, MW and beer, wine and spirit sourcing manager for Waitrose, explained that was not always the case.

“Bottle neck sleeves were introduced many years ago to prevent pests such as moths and weevils from ruining wines kept in dark, damp cellars,” said Dick. “The caterpillars of this moth species would bore into the wine corks, causing the wine to leak, or taste musty.  Nowadays, few people have wine cellars and those who do tend to keep them in much better conditions. This has meant that the sleeves have remained for purely aesthetic reasons and are no longer needed to protect wine.”

Waitrose will extend the sleeve removal to all their Loved & Found range by the end of the year, with Dick adding that the company is also bringing in new corks for their wine. “The bottles in our trial will be corked with a new FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) cork which has been extensively tried and tested for its ability to resist being contaminated with TCA (trichloroanisole), which makes corks smell and taste mouldy and ruins wine. TCA is the reason why cork fell out of favour, but cork has great sustainability credentials which is why it’s making a comeback.”

Estimates by Waitrose have put the saving of removing the capsules on its range of ten Loved and Found wines at half a tonne of unnecessary packaging per year.