Wine in cans in 2020

At this time of the year, web sites are prone to either review the departing year, or prophecy the incoming one. So, let’s try some of that here; although we will first have to go back in time.

Way back in 1965, winemaker Tom Angove was running an industrial-scale wine operation in Renmark, South Australia. This meant that he had to sell more cheap wine than people were buying in bottles at the time, at least in Australia. He knew of a product used, since 1955, to transport and dispense battery acid in the USA — a flexible plastic bag inside a box. After some trial and error, he developed a version for wine, which became known as “cask wine” in Australia and “bag-in-box wine” everywhere else (Cask wine turns 50 and it’s time to pay it some respect). By 1970, the Wynns wine company had modified it into the form that we know today, with a tap not a clothes peg (1970 Wynns perfect the wine cask). This packaging gradually replaced the venerable glass flagon as the preferred way to retail cheap wine, worldwide.

Well, that was 50 years ago, and it has been suggested that it is time to move on. Plastic is no longer a recommended way to package anything, let alone wine, because the oceans are now full of plastic debris, resulting from single-use packaging. This is called pollution, which results from a failure of human recycling processes — plastic is rarely re-used, but it can be recycled, although it often isn’t.

Glass can also be recycled, but at much greater expense. Sand has to be heated to a horrendous temperature in order to turn it into glass bottles; and that glass has to be heated to not much less, in order to recycle it into new bottles. These procedures burn huge amounts of fuel of one sort or another, which then contributes to global climate change, via the so-called carbon footprint. We could, of course, re-use the glass bottles that we have, rather than recycling them. In the past, this has been done for soft drinks, but not often for wine (see A 5-cent deposit on wine bottles in New York? Maybe).* Glass is also very heavy as far as packaging goes, much worse than plastic. This also contributes to global climate change, by increasing transportation-related burning of fuels.

On the other hand, aluminum cans are easier to recycle and cheaper to freight than are bottles. So, it seems inevitable that the suggestion for wine-in-a-can will be made. It is used for beer, so why not wine? This is easily argued on the grounds of being more in-tune with the modern world (see Making smarter sustainable choices at the bottle shop) — we should care about the sustainability ethics of producers, and make retailing choices that minimize our own environmental impact (buy local products, reduce unnecessary packaging, etc).

There are a number of options for drinks producers, given that consumer awareness is at an all-time high, and the ongoing creation of laws restricting single-use plastics (eg. Thailand has a total ban on plastic bags from 2021). For instance, there are now flattish (recyclable) PET containers that are said to be 40% more spatially efficient than round bottles, and are 87% lighter than glass bottles (Eco-packaging trends across spirits, wine and beer). There also exist bottles made of much lighter glass than is the current standard, which cuts transportation impacts.

So, it seems obvious that, among these options, wine cans are going to become prevalent. The wine industry is simply going to have to accept it, just the way it did for plastic bladders in cardboard boxes. Given this prognosis, the industry needs to embrace the idea, and to make the most of it that they can (pun intended). There is no point in leading the horse to water — the horse needs to be proactive, and lead itself.

Cans are not yet the Next Big Thing, of course. It seems that bottles currently command $US15 billion in sales, bag-in-box $1.4 billion, and cans only $90 million (A skeptic’s guide to wine in cans), so the can manufacturers are not yet rubbing their hands with glee. Still, we need to think about the future, because it has been suggested that Wine in cans will represent 10% of the market in 2025.

The basic question, then, is how to retain as much as possible of wine’s special ethos, while sticking it in something that looks like a beer can, at best, and a cola can, at worst. You don’t go to a debutante dance dressed like a house cleaner — even Cinderella knew better than that. You might, however, go to a sports game or a picnic or to the beach carrying a 6-pack of wine, snuggled next to the beers and coolers.

Part of the issue, then, is about what sort of wine should be in these cans. The best stuff comes in bottles, we all know that. You don’t lay down a cellar full of “Chateau Cardboard” (as we called it in Australia); and, so, the bag-in-box packaging has not been used for the best-quality wines. Presumably the same will be true for cans — cellaring “a 12-pack of wine” will not be the same as laying down “a case of wine”.

This will not stop the advertisers, of course. Back in the 1970s, the most successful Australian brand of bladder wines, Orlando Coolabah (launched in 1973), had a series of television ads based on the slogan: “Where do you hide your Coolabah?” (see Australia Remember When). It showed examples such as hiding your wine cask behind a large pot plant, so that the other party-goers could not get their hands on the good stuff.

Sadly, current examples indicate that canned wine will be cheap, fizzy, and best drunk cold, no matter what the advertisers tell us. Not unexpectedly, this matches the current expectations for beer and soft drinks, although these may not be the best role models to choose. Aluminum cans are currently not seen as part of the alleged trend towards premiumisation of the wine industry (see Has there really been recent premiumization in the wine industry?). Discussions of canned wine “quality” refer to the shelf-life not the enjoyability — retail examples indicate that we will be lucky to get a use-by date, let alone a vintage date. Surely the wine industry can do better than this?

Apart from these cultural expectations, the sensory experience may also leave something to be desired, of course, as noted by Lettie Teague (A skeptic’s guide to wine in cans):

Consuming straight from the can thwarts one of the great pleasures of wine: its aroma. Unlike the wide mouth of a wine glass, a can’s small opening isn’t made for sniffing; any scent of flowers, fruits or forest floor will be trapped in the can ... I tasted every wine both straight from the can and from a glass, and while some held up better from the can than others, all were better from a glass. Drinking straight from the can not only meant forsaking aromas but also savoring a first taste of can, not wine. When the wine was lousy the can only amplified its worst attributes in the manner of a tinny loudspeaker.

There are all sorts of technical issues. as well (see The recent Bulk Wine Conference addressed what can ruin wine in cans). These include the special lining used in food-grade aluminum cans, which needs to be tested separately for each wine. There is also the matter of dents and other damages that easily occur to cans, which has retail consequences. Consumers seem to treat dented cans as unacceptable, at best, and at worst they are seen as a sign of health problems with the contents (as noted to me by Bob Henry). In neither case is the retailer likely to make a successful sale.

There are also social issues, such as the fact that most wines have 2–3 times the alcohol content of beer, and therefore need to be consumed differently. The idea that soft drinks, beer, wine, and coolers may all come in the same packaging may require some sort of regulation regarding clear warning labels.

There are major advantages to cans, of course. Notable among them, you will be able to use your shower beer holder to drink wine while getting clean under a stream of water. Try doing that with your wine glass!

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* In southern Europe, and among migrants from there to the New World lands, wine flagons have often been re-used. The customer brings the empty flagon to their local winery, and exchanges it for a full one (and pays for the contents). The used flagon is cleaned by the winery, and re-filled. This procedure does not fill the oceans with plastic, nor does it engender much in the way of transportation costs.