An Introduction to Canned Wine: Should you be embracing wine in a can?

Canned wine has only started hitting the UK supermarket shelves in earnest this year, though America has been on this trend since 2016 (Trader Joe’s were even selling wine in cans back in 2009). South Africa, Australia and New Zealand are also embracing the can, so the question is: Is canned wine any good and should you be drinking it?

The perception of canned wine in the UK

The UK has strong and deep connections to the Old World of wine, beginning in the 12th century when a royal marriage cemented our ties with Bordeaux. This has meant that it hasn’t, historically, been much of a forward-thinker when it comes to innovation, preferring to be swaddled in the warm, comforting bandages of tradition. It’s worked for us for many years. I have the feeling this might be one reason why we’ve been so slow to pick up on the canned wine trend - in fact, it was outright rejected, laughed off, for years. Just talking to people in the UK wine industry and to wine enthusiasts about canned wine more often than not provokes such a strong reaction of disdain. 

But, what do we really know about canned wine? The majority of people, even wine people, don’t seem to know a lot. Yet, if we dare to raise our heads above the parapet, instead of them being blown clean off, we’ll see that premium wineries in Napa Valley (take a look at Larkin Wines), Washington (Ste Michelle) and in the Willamette Valley are running with canned wines and having a jolly old time.

My first experience of canned wine 

I first tasted wine from a can in America in 2019. I was at the Telluride Blues and Brews Festival in Colorado and, since it was a craft beer event, my palate had beer fatigue and what I yearned for was a familiar glass of red wine. As I approached the bar, I had second thoughts. Did I really want a luke-warm glass of red wine on a scorching day in Colorado? Also, did I really want to be walking around a festival, dancing to the bands, precariously balancing a plastic glass of wine in my hand and potentially sloshing it all over my fellow revellers? I’ve had red wine spilt over me at a gig before and it’s not very pleasant. In a word: sticky.

There I was, at the bar, unsure of what to order. I asked the bartender if he sold red wine and he said, ‘Sure,’ as he pulled a slim can out of the fridge and cracked open the top. Red wine. In a can? RED WINE. In a CAN?

I took it, feeling its cold smoothness against the palm of my hand, and read the label: Pinot Noir, Oregon. It had been lightly chilled and I took a sip. Cool, fruity, dry, refreshing and, most importantly, tasty. This was a revelation to me. It was so practical, portable and easy - a luxury that beer and cider drinkers have had for years. I pondered: ‘Why hadn’t we thought of this sooner, guys?!’.

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The pros of wine in a can 

If you’re not yet convinced, let us keep a clear head and look at the advantages of canned wine. Firstly, lets get the obvious environmental argument out of the way: aluminium cans are more eco-friendly than glass bottles. They produce a much smaller carbon footprint as they lighter to transport (generating less carbon emissions), plus they are infinitely recyclable. Yes, glass is recyclable too, but cans are more likely to actually be recycled - most glass bottles end up in landfill. 

Yet, even if swapping to cans could be the driving force in saving our planet, people are still likely to go with what is convenient - and here, cans win again. You don’t need a glass or a corkscrew, so cans are easy to take with you on the go - to, say, a picnic, a hike, or on a camping trip. They work well at concerts and festivals too - think how much easier they make a bartender’s life when serving wine to customers.

Portability is a huge plus, and this is also helped by the size of the cans. They are sold in 187ml, 250ml, 375ml or 500ml sizes, meaning that you don’t have to open a 750ml bottle if you want a glass of wine. You can also choose a different wine to your friends - something you can’t do when you’re sharing a bottle.

Again, stating the obvious, but cork taint or lightstrike are also things that don’t ever have to be considered.

The cons of wine in a can

But, where is the romance of a wine in a can? The craftsmanship of uncorking a wine? Yes, we are very emotionally attached to these things, aren’t we? But, there is scientific evidence to suggest that you’ll never get the joy of opening an aged wine from a can because canned wines don’t age. Oak aged wines aren’t suited to canning as the oak is too overpowering, and so only youthful, fresh, stainless steel fermented wines are suitable to put into cans. That’s a whole chunk of beautiful oaked wines - styles of Bordeaux, Rioja, Malbec, Zinfandel, Chianti, Amarone - that just can’t be enjoyed from a can.

You also don’t get the pleasure of smelling the wine’s aromas from the little hole in the top of the can, unless you pour it out into a glass, which defeats the point of its portability. The whole ritual of swirling a wine in the glass and enjoying how the flavours and aromas develop through the evening is lost with canned wine.

Too much oxygen getting into a bottle of wine is a risk we run with cork enclosures and there is also a risk the other way around - when the wine hasn’t been exposed to enough oxygen. As cans are a reductive environment, the wine might develop sulphuric compounds. Mmm, the aromas of struck matches are exactly what we want to smell when we open our wine! This can be remedied, though, by pouring the wine into a glass and the sulphur fumes will dissipate within a few minutes. Again, that does make portability a moot point.

Aside from the emotional attachments and the workable points aforementioned, what really matters is the quality of the wine inside the can. Though some reputable wineries are proud to fly the flag for their premium quality canned wines, there is a lot of poor quality canned wine out there. Low quality canned wine can be riddled with sugars and chemicals. Some are made from concentrate and some of the spritzers have added ‘ever clear’, along with artificial flavourings.

Can canned wine change the wine industry? (Yes, it can!)

In my opinion, the traditionalists needn’t be so worried. Canned wine will never replace bottled wine - this isn’t an either/or situation and no one needs to pick a side. There is room in the market for both and, actually, cans could have a positive effect on the entire industry.

Canned wine provides the opportunity to pull new wine drinkers into the market. The wine industry is failing to capture the Gen Zs, because they are drinking less alcohol. Wine, with its labelling, vocabulary and often stale image, is just not approachable to young people. The canned wine movement, whether you like it or not, is making wine more accessible, in the way that the craft beer movement succeeded in making ale-drinkers out of 25-year-olds. The designs on the cans look cool and lower alcohol products, like spritzers, answer the needs of the health and image concerned Gen Zs.

The wine industry is steeped in tradition and, historically, there has always been resistance when it comes to change (the topic of screwcaps still ignites a fury among Bordeaux buffs). The New World (North and South America, Australia, South Africa etc), in comparison to the Old World (France, Spain, Italy etc), does a better job at embracing change and moving with the times. Bound by fewer rules and regulations, it is definitely credited with being more forward-thinking on initiatives that benefit both the environment and the market, opening up the wine world to new wine drinkers. In many cases, cans will act as gateway wines - introducing wine to non-wine drinkers, which will then open up the rest of the wine world to them.

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How to choose your first canned wine 

Quality should be the deciding factor. The best examples of canned wine will be vineyard-specific, variety-specific and vintage-dated. 

Sans Wine Company in Napa Valley produce their wines from organically farmed vineyards. With their stainless steel fermented wines, they aim to express the pure characteristics of each grape variety and vineyard. In blind tastings, they say that no one can tell which wines were poured from a bottle or from a can.

Oregon-based winery, Union Wine Company, now sell their Underwood range in 45 states across America, and in 2019 they tripled their production. They make a Pinot Gris and a Pinot Noir in can, but by far their most popular seller is the rosé. 

We’re looking at light, fresh styles of wine here, so if you’re a canned wine virgin, start with a rosé or a fruit-forward white. Don’t go for a Malbec and expect it to blow you away.

In the UK, take a look at The Uncommon’s range. They make canned sparkling wine from handpicked English grapes from Surrey, Kent and Hampshire. They are vintage-dated wines, which are vegan friendly, and the production process is clear to see on their website, from the harvest of the grapes to the pressing, fermenting and canning. 

The future of canned wine

If we look at what’s happening in the States, it’s clear that canned wine can no longer be termed as a fad. From June 2017 to June 2018, the sector grew by 45% and, by the beginning of 2019, it was a $45 million dollar business that is continuing to grow. In terms of the entire wine industry, the canned wine category is still a baby, but, as we are doing with the unchartered waters of English Sparkling Wine, this is our chance to nurture it into something we’ll be proud of in the UK. Premium quality, stainless steel fermented, vineyard-specific, vintage-dated wines are what we should be looking at.

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Do we really want to be known as the stick-in-the-mud forever? We were so far behind on embracing New World wines that it took Steven Spurrier’s famous Judgement of Paris tasting for the British wine industry to even consider selling Californian wines (the Californian wines beat the French wines on every round when blind-tasted). Always cautious of being seen to be jumping on the bandwagon, many British consumers are still skeptical of wines that their OWN country are producing! (Even though some English Sparkling Wines have scored more highly in blind tastings than some of the top Champagne brands.) I think it’s time to be a little more humble and let the New World lead the way this time.

If Napa, the Willamette Valley and Chateau Ste. Michelle are backing premium canned wine, I reckon it’s a bandwagon worth jumping on.