How green are your bottles? I don't mean literally, in shades of glass colour, but in an environmental sense.

There's been much pressure recently to decrease bottle weight, reducing the carbon footprint in both manufacture and transport. Increasingly, leading wine critics include bottle weights in their tasting notes.

But huge differences remain in how much glass goes round the wine: I weighed the emptied bottles of my recommendations on this page, and they range from just under 400 grams to almost 700. The priciest were the heaviest, though that's not always the rule.

Sustainability is the current buzzword in wine, with many fanfares about saving the planet's resources, whether in growing, making or transporting. Bottle material is a major factor in that. Glass, acknowledges major on-line retailer The Wine Society, "is by far the biggest single element in the mix when it comes to reducing our carbon footprint".

"Right-weighting" (lightweight, but robust enough to avoid breakages) is increasingly important in the society's sustainability programme, with bottle weights of around a quarter of its own-label range reduced in the last two years.

At even bigger Laithwaites, which introduced the UK's first wine bottle made from 100 per cent recycled glass, head buyer Nick Taylor, acknowledges that efforts are still at the fledgling stage and regrets "that we do not have all the answers yet". More shipment in bulk and UK bottling is a major part of current strategy. Neither of these giants is yet going down the route of reuse rather than recycling, one way of making very large carbon footprint savings.

Investigations, says Taylor, have shown "we can't quite make it work". But it can. Listen to the impressive fact-based arguments of Muriel Chatel, head of Sustainable Wine Solutions whose sale and bottle-return system flourishes for restaurants in London and also offers consumers decent wines in returnable bottles – stockists include Nourished Communities, Islington, and Wilton Way Deli, Hackney.

Or those of Bertrand Grafé, owner of Belgian negociant Grafé Lecoqu that's responsible for recirculating almost 500,000 wine bottles a year. Creating a bottle from recycled glass, he says, produces one hundred times the CO2 that results from washing one.

Beyond glass, what about alternative materials for packaging wine? Cans are green, and their contents are now good and varied. Two other examples landed – lightly – on my desk recently. One is made from recycled plastic, in a squashed-flat format slim enough to slip through many letterboxes. The other was one of the much-hyped paper bottles, though it's actually a plastic pouch (possibly recyclable) encased in thin, colourfully printed recycled card. I'm not going to identify either, because I don't think the wines are anywhere near worth the price charged. To succeed, new packaging solutions need to over rather than under deliver.

Seven wines to try in October

My first recommendations are linked with a very informative webinar discussing sustainability approaches by vineyards round the world – in Australia (Wither Hills), South Africa (Journey's End) and Portugal's Alentejo region. Particularly impressive were the Portuguese wines, Herdade dos Lagos vinho tinto (£13.25, vintageroots.co.uk), a deep, dense, silky red, and Monte da Peceguina (£20-£22, corkofthenorth.co.uk, stroudwine.com) from Herdade Malhadinha Nova, a complex, layered, balanced white, almost chablis-like despite the huge climate difference. Both blend native and international varieties to deeply pleasurable effect. Hot, hot Alentejo is one of the world's most vulnerable wine regions: its growers recognise that to survive they must work together on climate adaptability practices.

Across in France, the people who select Laithwaites' wines have been having fun discovering unfamiliar gems from tiny appellations few drinkers will have encountered – and these two are in the lightest bottles here. Pattes Noires (£12/£10.50 in mix-12, laithwaites.co.uk) is a delightfully bright and warming merlot from the slopes of an extinct volcano in Languedoc. There's a great story attached, involving evil bees and a fairy-turned-vixen. Garrigue Grande (£11/£9) comes from Côteaux de la Cabrerisse, which rubs shoulders with some top Corbières sites. The blend of marselan (cabernet sauvignon/grenache cross), merlot and syrah neatly merges fruit, spice and garrigue herbs with a food-friendly hint of sourness. Laithwaites also has the very-special-indeed Close de la Vierge Jurançon (£17), one of France's oldest yet still little-known white appellations. This is rich yet fresh, full of tropical fruit with a touch of honey, all cloaked in elegance. Snap it up now, for a Christmas treat, before the limited stocks vanish.

Finally, two heavier bottles with excellent content. La Pettegola Vermentino (£15, Ocado) from Italy's Tuscan coast is an ideal white for winter, full of smart flavour, unusual and appealing. Louis Latour Bourgogne gamay (£16, also Ocado) is a rare exception to the rule that red burgundy is always pinot noir.

Serious stuff, the antithesis of beaujolais nouveau.