Back in 2022, we wrote about the idea of Wabi-sabi, which is a Japanese concept referring to “a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete…a beauty of things unconventional.”¹ Hold a bottle of our 2023 vintage wines up to the light, and you may catch a small bubble in the glass, or a faint ripple where the surface isn't perfectly even. Nothing is wrong, it is there on purpose. We have never thought beauty required perfection, and this bottle is a reflection of our values.
In the early days of Realm, we had a great deal to prove. Our bottles were heavy and tapered, built to impress the moment you picked one up. Back then we thought weight and heft projected quality. We were a young winery earning a place, and a serious bottle helped make the case.
We are in a different place now and the question we found ourselves asking a few years ago was: does it serve the wine and the land, or only the impression? Beginning with the 2021 vintage, we moved to a glass 30 percent lighter than the old one. It cellars better, with a straight edge that stacks cleanly, and it lightens the footprint of every shipment we send.
With the 2023 vintage, we began to use a 100 percent recycled glass called Wild Glass. Because it begins life as something else before it is melted down to produce Wild Glass, each bottle carries its own character. About 60 percent show small bubbles or slight variations, flecks of yellow, white or green caught in the glass. These are not defects, and we do not pull them from the line. They are the signature of recycled glass, and of a choice we are proud to have made. To make it feel more personal, we created a custom mold for the base of each bottle that reads: The Realm of Possibility.
We didn't move to Wild Glass to make a statement. We made the change quietly, because it was the right thing to do. As the 2023 vintage wines have reached your cellars, some of you have noticed the small bubbles and variations in the glass and reached out to ask. So this felt like the right moment to share our story.
Stewardship of the land has never been a marketing line for us. It is at the core of who we are and shows up in many ways throughout the Realm journey. One of those ways is a bottle that is a little imperfect, and all the better for it.
¹Koren, Leonard. 1994 and 2008. “Introduction.” Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers. P.7. Point Reyes, CA. Imperfect Publishing.
