In 2007, Harry Otto visited the Hartford, CT landfill, overseen by the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection. There he witnessed countless wine bottles, the majority of which were the commonly used 750ml variety, unable to be recycled and heading for landfill material. From Robert Mondavi to Beringer to Yellow Tail, they were all in there.
The numbers are staggering in matters of wine bottle disposal. Each year 300,000,000 cases of wine are sold in the U.S. alone, equating to over four billion bottles, 70% of which end up in landfill. Considering that each bottle requires enough energy to light a 100-watt light bulb for an hour to produce, that is an alarming statistic. More importantly, utilizing wine bottles for landfill material is about 250X more costly than conventional means, and imposes an inconceivable impact on our, and more importantly our grandchildren’s, environment.
It was that day that Otto set out to change the way the wine industry looks at bottles versus bags. As a previous restaurateur, he understood it wouldn’t be easy shifting wine drinkers from the sexy bottle to a cardboard box. Within a week he began to experiment with ways of transferring wine from bag-in-box (BIB) containers and into glasses without raising so much as an eyebrow (i.e. shielding BIB packaging from end user). Concurrently, he thought about ways to amplify the advantages of BIB wines to make the practice more lucrative. So, unlike the slow and cumbersome mechanical pumps of the wine tap systems being marketed, Otto experimented pressurizing the bags with forced air, enabling faster pour rates, while also preserving the wine inside the bag, much the way a bottle’s “stiffness” does.
About a year later Otto had a system built that could take bagged wine products and dispense portions into bar-top dispensers at amazing speeds (the current system pours 6oz in approximately 1/3 of a second). However, to bring the unit to market presented its own set of unique challenges. It was then that he brought the system to the home of lifelong friend, and now founding partner, Sal Comunale. Comunale was impressed at the speed, accuracy and quality-preserving characteristics of the Wine Cannon® system. Sal also had first-hand experience of how more and more products were being moved from glass based containers to eco-friendly advanced packaging, having been an investor in several startup consumer product companies. At that point they both knew that patent protection would be critical to moving this project forward.
For the next two years, the newly formed partnership would build and rebuild, while simultaneously transferring the working ideas to technical illustrations and USPTO verbiage. With the help of Patent Attorney Edward Etkin, whose patents range from Google technologies to gun-maker Smith & Wesson, Bevolution Systems, LLC was born in Greenwich, CT, along with it’s familiar “save money, save the planet, one glass at a time®”.
While Otto works on developing a 4th generation Wine Cannon®, capable of providing 7 different varietals from one bar-top dispenser, with a footprint no larger than a single wine bottle, Comunale works with companies like Wine Metrics to illustrate how the data supports vast savings for the end users apart from the obvious advantages, such as product improvement, labor costs, transportation and accountability.
To learn more about Bevolution Systems, LLC and see their technology in action, visit them at bevolutionsystems.com.
