Wine in cans? What's the world coming to?

By By Stan Torgerson / wine columnist
April 30, 2003
Some winemakers must lie awake at night trying to find new ways to sell their product.
If the quality of the product won't do it, take a page out of the movie "Gypsy." If you've never seen the film, there's a scene where three strip-teasers sing a song called "You've Got To Have a Gimmick" about how they achieved their success. The song could well be the theme for today's wine industry.
According to Wine Spectator Magazine, the newest is an announcement by two Australian winemakers of a plan to put premium, vintage-dated wine in cans.
I kid you not
Gowrie Mountain Estates in Queensland, Australia, will be shipping its new line of wines in 250-milliliter cans, equal to one-third of a bottle of wine, to the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan.
Obviously, they hope to tap the beer market as well as sell beginners in the joys of wine. At the risk of sounding like a skeptic, I don't plan to invest in their company.
The product will be called Aussie wine. It will be offered in four-packs with colorful and whimsical illustrations of Australian wildlife on the cans. The four-pack containing a 2001 cabernet-shiraz blend will retail for $10. A 2002 chardonnay pack goes for just under $9.
Later this year, they will send along a four-pack of a sweet white wine that will go on the shelf at about $8.
These are not the familiar wine coolers. This is supposed to be wine fit for a bottle but packaged in cans for the convenience of the consumers.
James Newbury, sales and marketing manager for Gowrie Mountain, says wine in cans is an underdeveloped market. Sounds about right to me. The wine was first introduced during a wine festival in London. Newbury concedes that people did not immediately take to the idea of quality wine in a can.
Touted advantages
This may seem like an entirely new idea, but actually it was tried about 10 years ago in the Asian market. In Asia virtually every product is put in a can.
Newbury says that experiment used a large can with a low-quality wine. The cans were eventually pulled from the market.
For his sales pitch, he claims the can took years to develop and imparts no flavor to the wine because of the special lining. He touts the benefits of the smaller can because it favors those who do not want to drink a full bottle of wine.
Gowrie Mountain vineyard bottles about 30,000 cases of wine as well and plans to continue to do so. The grapes used for the canned wine are obtained from different vineyards than those used in the bottling.
Other new ideas
There have been a number of changes in the wine industry in recent years in addition to putting quality wine in a can.
When corks became expensive and in short supply, a number of wineries went to plastic corks. They work well but they are a pain to get out using the new, and increasingly popular "Rabbit" corkscrews. In fact the Rabbit doesn't work well on them at all.
A few other wine makers switched to screw-top bottles, despite the fact that consumers relate screw-tops to cheap inferior wines, the Gallo jug wines to be specific.
But one of my favorites from New Zealand, the Villa Maria sauvignon blanc wine-maker, now puts screw-tops on their bottles and it is remarkable how easy it is to forget the top when you drink the contents.
There has also been a rush of super-colorful or modern art type labels to attract the purchaser's attention. That's one of my weaknesses.
When I see labels of that type I automatically assume the wine itself can be no better than average, otherwise why would the label be so flashy. It's a "the wine should sell itself" attitude without giving any regard to the fact that the novice wine purchaser would not have the knowledge to be able to select quality without actually purchasing a bottle and trying it.
Coming to Mississippi?
But you'll probably never see wine in cans in Mississippi. Supermarkets are the logical outlets for the product. In our state they can't sell products that are over 5 percent alcohol and wine stores would have to be very adventuresome to invest money in a product which would likely sit on their shelves and not sell.
New Orleans will, Meridian won't. I don't see that as their gain and our loss.