In the wake of COP26 when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) set the target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 43% this decade, a group of leading wine professionals penned an open letter to the then-exchequer secretary to the treasury James Cartlidge.
Under the name WTAF (Wine Traders for Alternative Formats), the letter called for “real change in our industry and less reliance on heavy glass bottles”.
The letter proposed that: “Switching from glass to alternative formats could save as much as 750,000,000 KgCO2e of emissions every year in the UK alone. This is the equivalent of taking 350,000 cars off the road overnight and equates to well over a third of the carbon footprint of wine consumed in the UK.”
And it argued that “crucially, there is little or no perceivable difference in quality between these formats and wine in glass bottles for wines drunk within a few months of purchase, as most are”.
Among the signatories were some of the UK wine industry’s most influential figures, including Jancis Robinson MW and Hugh Johnson.
The conversation about alternative packaging indicating a wine’s quality has plagued the industry since the adoption of screwcaps and typically today refers to bag-in-box, but cans are making a strong case as the alternative-to-alternative wine packaging.
The format does solve a few of wine’s modern problems. Perhaps most convincing are the aforementioned sustainability credentials.
The wine industry is no stranger to the impacts of human-driven global warming. Already, suitable wine-growing regions have extended into higher latitudes, winemakers around the world are turning to more heat and drought-resistant varieties, and damaging weather events have become increasingly commonplace.
“Aluminium cans are one of the most recyclable materials helping to reduce waste and the need for new raw materials,” says Jorge Martínez, winemaker at Viña Mancura which recently released a range of canned wines, The Applicant, which uses reserve-level wines from Chile’s Central Valley.
“They’re significantly lighter than traditional glass bottles, they’re easier to pack and transport, reducing overall logistics energy consumption… and producing aluminium cans requires less energy than producing glass bottles, further decreasing the carbon footprint.”
But it’s not just sustainability that threatens the wine industry. According to Wine Intelligence data, in the US in 2010, 32% of all regular wine drinkers were aged 55 and over, and 28% were aged between 21 and 34. In 2020, 47% of regular wine drinkers were aged 55 and over and only 18% were aged between 21 and 34.
That trend is even more pronounced in the UK where between 2010 and 2020, regular wine drinkers aged 18-34 years old declined from 25% to 14% and among those aged 55 and over, the figure rose from 37% to 56%. In both markets, regular wine drinkers are getting older.
“If industry figures are turning down a little bit, I think it’s a good idea to try cans,” says Louisa Payne, founder & director of Brixton Wine Club, a UK-based wine subscription that only stocks canned wine.
“From a producer perspective, if they can get a can to the market, I would say it’s a good way to engage younger customers with your product,” she adds.
Fresh option
But it’s not just young people who benefit from smaller serving sizes. “One of our customers, a wine bar and retailer, during slower months uses our cans as their red wine by the glass so they don’t have to worry about opening a bottle and it losing freshness,” says Justinian Brock, who co-founded Can’t Be Bothered Wine following a conversation bemoaning the lack of quality, fresh red wine in pubs.
“The impetus when we started was that I just wanted to get a wine in a can that didn’t suck. Often it’s been open for too long or the quality isn’t great. We saw putting good wine in cans as a solution to that.”
The convenience of cans is difficult to argue against. Beyond the obvious improvements to shipping and storage, smaller formats allow for a greater variety of options.
“Initially, Brixton Wine Club was a tasting club that I ran from my flat in Brixton – we obviously couldn’t continue that in lockdown,” says Payne.
“Cans were the perfect solution for people wanting to try lots of different wines at home without committing to entire bottles. For tasting purposes, it was such a good way to discover different grapes, different styles. They’re easy to post and they don’t smash like glass does, so it felt like a no-brainer to continue the wine tasting online and with cans.”
Guada Oliver, co-founder of Candour Wine in London, adds: “Wine is not getting to certain consumption opportunities because of the format. Cans allow someone who lives alone and doesn’t want to open a full bottle of wine to have a can instead and it’s easier to move around with cans than with bottles. So, if you’re going to a picnic or on a train or hiking, it’s easier to carry a can.”
But let’s discuss the elephant in the room. There is a clear, and sometimes valid, perception that wine in a can won’t represent the same quality as wine in a bottle.
“At the moment, people still associate cans with cheap wine,” says Martínez. “We have to show people that you can find good wines in a can but it takes a long time to change people’s minds. It’s similar to when we started using screwcaps instead of corks. At first, people thought a screwcap meant that the wine was cheap and bad quality, but over time that perspective has changed.”
But those perspectives, especially in industries that have a rich wine tradition, can be slow to change.
“Our biggest challenge by far is convincing the consumer that they can get a good wine in a can,” says Oliver. “Often, they don’t even really know how to explain why, but they think that if it comes in a can, it has to be lower quality. There’s a perception that the tin affects the taste of the wine, that the wine doesn’t keep for as long and, while the last point is true, these aren’t wines that should be kept for long anyway. But when people taste it, they recognise that the wine is good.”
Increasing interest
Payne had similar issues when making the pivot to canned wine. “At the start, there weren’t as many brands and there weren’t as many styles to buy, but we’ve been doing this for four years now, and there are just more and more cans coming to the market all the time,” she explains.
“Some of the wines that I used to get sent at the beginning weren’t great. Cans are often seen as a grab-and-go option – they’ll be at a certain price point in a supermarket and they never really go any higher than that price point. But there’s such a movement away from that, people are now putting really interesting, high-quality wines in cans.
“Compared to even four years ago, it’s so much easier to find better wines. There are better canning facilities, there are better mobile canners. Everything has levelled up and I think it’s only going to continue.”
A key consideration for producers is the liquid. Some wines benefit from the bottle ageing that only a natural cork can offer and, in some cases, it would simply be a waste.
“There are certain wines I would never put in a can,” says Brock. “With a can, there’s no oxygen interacting with the wine. So if we’re talking about ageing Bordeaux, Barolo, Burgundy wines that I’m going to have in my cellar, that I’m going to have a birth year of my child, wines that I want to age, they have to be in a bottle because the cork lets them breathe. A Barolo that’s 25 years old, it’s greater than the sum of its parts, partially because it’s aged due to that tiny interaction with oxygen.
“But that’s not how we drink wine. Anywhere from 80-95% of wine is consumed within 48 hours of being purchased, so if we’re serious about sustainability, why does that wine need to be in heavy glass?
“I talked to my friend in California, they’re on their sixth or seventh vintage, and she said that the cans from the first vintage taste exactly the same as they did when they were put in the can – it’s like a photograph of the wine right when it came out of the barrel, or right when it was finished. That’s why we chose Langhe Rosso. When this wine was finished in the barrel and put into the bottle, it was ready to drink. It’s about choosing the right wines, and there’s a huge volume of wines that are that right.”
Cans offer an interesting option for winemakers who want to have a serious look at solving some of wine’s modern problems, but they’re by no means a perfect solution. But, when they do work, with wines made to be drunk young and fresh, and in low-volume on-trade venues, they can offer a superior drinking experience to bottles.
Perceptions will need to be changed if adoption is going to ever be more widespread, but as better wines continue to be canned, that change will gradually arrive.
