‘Quaffable’ wine in cans gains fans — and sales
A can of Pinot Noir in your backpack. A six-pack of rosé in the cooler.
What once seemed like heresy — drinking wine right from, well, a beer can — is now going mainstream with canned wine sales soaring and new brands racing to market.
And why not?
As beer drinkers will tell you, aluminum cans are easily transportable, quickly chillable and they come with a smaller carbon footprint than bottles.
The de facto king of canned wines is Ryan Harms, owner and founder of Oregon’s Union Wine Co., which launched the Underwood brand in 2014. Today, he estimates that Underwood — which produced 4.2 million cans in 2017 — claims a 35% market share of this $14 million industry.
Harms doesn’t see this as a passing fancy: “Canned wine is no longer a trend, it’s a category.”
Underwood’s canned lineup includes Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Bubbles, Rosé, Rosé Bubbles, as well as two wine coolers, Riesling Radler and soon-to-be-released Strawberry Cooler. But Harms notes that Underwood’s Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and Rosé are also available in bottles.
“The wine that we can is the same exact blend that we put into the bottle,” he said, noting that the cans “are lined and permit no effect on the taste or interaction of the wine” with either lining or aluminum.
Canned wines still represent less than 1% of the market, well below boxed wine or Tetra Paks. What’s happening, though, is that canned wine’s dollar growth is climbing disproportionately among alternative wine packaging, up above 50% in 2017, according to Shanken Daily News, which reports on the wine, spirits and beer industry.
Union Wine’s two bottled brands are Kings Ridge and Alchemist, but thanks to Underwood’s popularity 55% of its total production will be in aluminum in 2018.
To keep up, they’ve just completed a packaging plant that can turn out 600 to 650 cans a minute, making it the fastest facility in the wine canning industry. The plant also has the capacity to produce 200 to 250 bottles a minute.
In a recent email, Harms wrote that portability helps explain why the lightweight containers are so popular. “Cans can go places glass bottles can’t always go — camping, hiking, beach, etc.”
The fact that it’s almost impossible to be pretentious when drinking from a can is another plus.
This unceremonious packaging removes the social pressure “to appear like you understand what you are doing when you consume wine,” he said.
By avoiding the ritual of opening a bottle, Harms hopes people will “feel more comfortable with drinking wine.”
When it comes to can size, Underwood and other popular brands such as House Wine have settled on 375ml or roughly 12.5 ounces, which equals half a regular 750ml bottle. That’s enough for about 21⁄2glasses of wine — a standard pour is 5 ounces — so you might want to have a glass or paper cup handy for sharing.
But you’ll also see other sizes, from single-serve 187ml cans up to 500ml. And depending on size and brand, the cans are sold singly or in four- or sixpacks.
While I haven’t begun to make a dent in the many choices, I recently popped open selections from several locally available brands, including FlipFlop, House Wine, Coppola, Underwood, Lila, We Are California, and new-to-our-market Joe to Go.
Among the best across the board are the dry or nearly dry rosés, either sparkling or still. One of the standout reds is the Pinot Noir from Underwood.
Expect to pay about $6 or $7 for a 375ml can. That might seem expensive, but it’s half a bottle, so you can reasonably expect it to taste like wine in the popular $12 to $14-abottle range.
Non-vintage and quaffable describes most of these wines. But Napa-based Sans Wine is one example of a winery putting single-vineyard, vintage-dated wine in cans. It offers, for example, a 3-pack of 2017 Rutherford Riesling, McGill Vineyard, for $45. Not available in Wisconsin, Sans Wine can be ordered online from the winery.
Anne Schamberg is a freelance writer who lives in Waukesha. Email her at aschamberg@gmail.com.