A lot of the seasoned dinosaurs of the wine industry look down their Cretaceous little noses at canned wine, viewing the category as ubiquitously cheap and low quality, and therefore not worth even giving a chance.
But as with all innovation in wine, what begins as a bit of a joke often transforms into a piece of the future. We went into this largely inexperienced with the “wonderful” little world of canned wine, but as the selection available at grocery stores and wine shops around the country grows each day, we would be remiss if we did not give them a humble try.
Indeed “wine in a can” was once considered a niche product (LIKE ME), but over the past decade the market for canned wine has expanded faster than my waistline, gaining an insane amount of traction in markets around the world - especially the United States. In 2016 we saw early signs that the canned wine industry was exploding when total sales grew 125% YOY to $14.5 million — and canned still wine sales increased an eye watering >1000% YOY (canned still wines were previously a rarity in a space dominated by sparkling). The rise from there has been meteoric and by 2023 sales hit around $600 million. Annual sales are projected to break $1 billion by 2030 according to this report.
We get it. This “trend” isn’t just about convenience; it seems to reflect a broader shift in consumer preferences. After all, canned wines are inexpensive, portable and covert(they’re easier to drink in public!), more sustainable (in some ways) than bottled wine, and the number of “options” available is constantly growing.
But just how good is the so-called “value” of these products? THE ANSWER WILL (PROBABLY NOT) SHOCK YOU!
To better understand the answer, let’s take a closer look at some can-a-wine specific details:
Styles & Options
Today canned wines encompass a wide range of styles including rosé, red, white, and sparkling varieties. Quality has also allegedly improved significantly, with many producers focusing on region-specific and in some cases even vintage-dated options that challenge the stereotype of lower-quality canned beverages. Some innovative wineries are attempting to craft premium wines that maintain their integrity and flavor profile even in a can, which could make them a viable choice for both casual drinkers and connoisseurs alike.
Cost & Environmental Impact
Canned wines are significantly cheaper to package and significantly cheaper to ship (aluminum cans weigh a lot less than glass bottles, and there’s less risk of breakage) so those costs are reduced down the funnel when you buy them.
Less weight means reduced emissions associated with transport, and the cans are often made from recycled (and recyclable) materials, making them more environmentally friendly for all the greenophile oenophiles out there.
Value & Convenience
Ultimately, though, the appeal of canned wine — especially with TODAY’S YOUTH — may largely lie in its affordability (often DIRT CHEAP) and its accessibility. With various sizes available—from single servings to larger cans (or packs of cans)—consumers can enjoy a “glass” without a glass, and don’t have to commit to opening an entire bottle.
Cans are lightweight, easy to transport, and require no additional tools for serving—no glasses or corkscrews needed. This practicality makes canned wine an attractive option for outdoor activities or events where traditional glass bottles might be cumbersome or prohibited. Plus, they are easy to masquerade as “soft drinks” in your “koozie” when you got a mean ole case of the shakes at your next family reunion.
Quality & Shelf Life
So convenience and portability are there, but what about its shelf life and quality?
Quality will no doubt keep improving as the market for canned wine grows, but generally you don’t see producers putting their best wines into cans unless canned wine is all they produce. And people don’t typically turn to wine in a can when looking for a high quality wine, which in turn makes it less profitable to can good wine, creating a sort of self-sustained cycle of low quality canned wine production. Furthermore, with lower expectations already present in the canned-wine ecosystem, producers can get away with canning lower quality products.
So why would a producer put something bottleworthy into a can? From an aesthetic standpoint, they have to accept that most people won’t swirl the wine and get a whiff of its aromatics, and that their lips will be touching metal when they take a sip. For winemakers that take pride in their products, the idea that something they’ve created won’t be fully appreciated could be deterring.
But let’s set that aside for a moment and assume that aesthetics and appreciation of the product are not a concern. How can a producer justify the risk of putting something bottleworthy into a can? Well, from a business standpoint, they have to ensure that profit margin is at least equal to where it would be if they bottled it.
If you look on grocery store shelves, you’ll see that this may be happening – one of the wines we reviewed today, for example, came in a 4 pack for around $19. That comes to 1.25 bottles of wine, so cost per bottle would be about $15. Considering this is canned Sauvignon Blanc, we are already at the price point where you can get exceptional quality in the bottle, so the value factor kind of goes out the window. What’s inside, however, you might expect to be closer in quality to bottled wine, and therefore if you value all of the other convenience factors when making your purchasing decision, this could be a viable option.
But is what’s inside comparable to, say, a $15 bottle of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc (or even an $8 bottle)?
It’s hard to say, and there’s a reason for that: shelf life.
Most canned wine doesn’t sport a vintage, but it does have a date on which it was canned.
Of course, they don’t print “drink by” dates on the cans... I WONDER WHY?
Just using the 10 canned wines selected for this week’s reviews, I can tell you that EVERY. SINGLE. CAN. was canned over a year ago. This is not an exaggeration. When poring over the fine print on these cans for any information the producers may have provided, I noticed these codes on the bottoms of the can:
These numbers, which can be printed in a variety of ways, reveal (in not-always-too-easy-to-decipher ways) the date that the wine was canned. One of the most common ways it is printed is by leading off with ddd.yy. Using the image above as an example, “LW 216 23 06 04 : 04” might seem convoluted (it is), but in that garbled mess we have 216 23, which means that this wine was canned on the 216th day of 2023, so August 4th, 2023. And this lovely plastic can of Woodbridge is the most recently canned of the 10 tasted this week if you can believe it.
Cans are generally far less insulated than glass bottles and facilitate more rapid heat transfer, so while this bodes well for quickly cooling down your canned wine for consumption, it also means that cans are much more prone to temperature fluctuation throughout their lifetime. A short period in the back of a non-temperature-controlled truck can be a death sentence, and the longer the wine has been canned, the more opportunities it has had to heat up and cool back down, which can have a serious impact on the character of the wine itself. Heat damage can degrade the flavors of the wine, making them taste flatter, oxidized, and replacing fresh and fruity flavors with muted and stewed ones (THE BAD KIND!). Too-cold temperatures, while generally less detrimental than overheating, can also negatively impact the profile and balance of the wine.
There’s another issue that is important to look at – the interactions between what’s in the can and the can itself. Aluminum actually reacts with SO2 (sulfur dioxide) which is in almost all wines as a preservative and antimicrobial agent. The resultant compound is H2S (hydrogen sulfide) which smells like rotten eggs (A NOTE WE ACTUALLY GOT IN MANY OF THESE WINES). While many (though not all) canned wines use a synthetic liner that creates a barrier, the acidity of the wine can corrode that lining over time, so the amount of time the wine is in a can is actually quite relevant to how drinkable it will be. Our guess is that many producers will do one or both of two things: reducing the acidity of the wines in the cans, or reducing the amount of SO2 used in the production of the wines. Less acidic wines may not taste as fresh or vibrant, and with less SO2, the wines are more prone to oxidation during the winemaking process (and in the can, though cans are more or less airtight).
This all taken together means that canned wines have a lot of potential issues that go beyond just the quality of the product when it initially enters the can. Those issues also may inform the winemaking practices, which in turn may negatively affect the product being canned.
So — how does this all play out in the real world? Let’s dive into the juice!
Profile: Port-a-potty, deep funk, green apple, rubber, eraser, lime rind, hint of crushed shells as it opens Palate: Dry, light body, high acid, medium finish
Okay port-a-potty is probably the nastiest note I’ve ever written but the smell really was quite offensive and sulfury upon opening (H2S, anyone?). It improved aromatically as it had a chance to breathe, with most of the initially offensive notes dissipating within a few minutes of pouring, but you would typically be drinking it out of the can so hard to know if they’d dissipate at all (perhaps the can would partially shield you from the onslaught). Were it not for the foul aromatics, this would have been a better experience, but unfortunately as a byproduct of either production methods or time spent in a can, they were there. That said, overall not bad — definitely not “good” as wine goes — but as a cold carbonated alcoholic beverage, this is serviceable and I’d willingly crack an ice cold one open on the beach if we were out of beer.
Profile: Stinky funk, peach, iodine, bad apple Palate: Dry, light body, medium- acid, short finish (0 seconds)
WOW this was awful. Maybe I got a bad can, idk, but I wouldn’t really call this wine. Watery and unpleasant in flavor - tasted oxidized, like a tea brewed from old nuts and air-browned apple core. No good flavors meant the finish ended before it began.
Profile: Sweet cherry, canned cranberry, Christmas spice, wet stone, hint of tobacco Palate: Dry, medium+ acid, light body, medium tannin, medium- finish
Honestly, pleasantly surprised (especially given the 2021 canning!) — I could see having it at a mixer, walk up to a little fold out table and they’re handing out cans, sip this while distracted by excruciatingly meaningful conversations with strangers. Sure, the finish is relatively short and a little bitter, and the concentration is a little lacking, but this is distinctly Pinot Noir and fairly nice aromatically. It doesn’t taste manipulated and all in all, it performed decently well when viewed in the context of the canned reds tasted today. Wonder what they taste like freshly canned? Keep wondering.
Profile: Soy sauce, artificial black fruit syrup Palate: Off dry to med sweet, medium- acidity, low tannin, medium body, short finish
Truly bad. Spaced out and poured it before scoring, but suffice to say I didn’t like it. It’s that kind of cloying fruit bomby style you often see in mass market wines, simplified down to a sort of one-note nondescript artificial black fruit syrup flavor. On the bright side, this one did not have that port-a-potty funk that a lot of them came with free of charge, so for some this might be a winner, but for me it was undrinkable.
Profile: Peach rings, candied hearts, white flowers, orange, strawberry Palate: Off dry to Medium sweet, medium- body, medium+ acid, medium finish
Aromatically quite nice. This embodies what Unicorn implies, with a sort of candy rainbow profile. If you like sweet fruity candies from your childhood, this might be your jam.
Too sweet and not enough acid to hold up to it for me. Plus, bubbles were weak.
Profile: Stinky funk, strawberry, pink starburst, orange peel, hint of toast Palate: Off dry, medium- acid, light body, short finish
Hidden behind that stinky funk we’ve quickly come to know and “love” from canned wine was a profile of strawberry and orange peel with a hint of toast. Once you sniff past the stench, you could almost imagine this might be a good experience, but alas -the wine was flabby, sported too much residual sugar, and had a mercifully short finish. This was one of the older “canning vintages,” so to speak, with 2+ years spent “evolving” in it’s aluminum prison. Can’t speak for a fresh canning, but then again, I wasn’t given a choice.
Smelled like actual wine, so I was excited at first, but flavors were weak and the wine was flabby. Furthermore, the bubbles were faint — far from “lively” as advertised on the can — and the aftertaste was not great.
Palate: Ripe blackberries, mixed berry iHop syrup, artificial vanilla, hint of spice Profile: Off dry, medium+ tannin, medium acid, full body, short finish
Really artificial, like classic manipulated red but just flatter and even less interesting. That said this is just under $7 for 4 cans, so you really do get what you pay for. If you like that super fruity and slightly sweet style of California wine and don’t really care about complexity or structure, this is made for you.
Aromatically pleasant, reminiscent of a Prosecco, but tastes a bit like old apple juice and rubber with no freshness to the fruit flavors. Bubbles very fine and not powerful, and aftertaste is a little bitter. Perhaps with several years fewer in a can, this would have been much nicer to drink.
Profile: Lychee, passionfruit, nectarine, persimmon, white tea, matcha Palate: Dry, medium+ acidity, light body, long finish
Man I was excited for this one — a Casablanca Valley SB that brands itself “Luxury Wine in a Can” and boasts an alleged 88 Point Wine Spectator Score in 2022.
Cracking it open it was really cool aromatically, sporting that classic Sauv Blanc passionfruit note, along with lychee, nectarine, persimmon and a unique sort of matcha and white tea aroma. But the excitement stopped there. Upon taking a sip, the fruit flavors were muted and slightly spoiled in character, completely lacking in fruit freshness and the vibrancy we’d like from a Sauvignon blanc. Priced at almost $19 for 4 cans (1.25 bottles of wine), you could do much better in the SB category for the price. Still, interesting and if you are going to say a no glass beach or poolside and want to bring something with you that could surprise people, this could be a choice.
Unfortunately I think there’s reason to believe this may have gone over the hill since it’s been almost 2 years since it was canned and it was imported from Chile, which means a longer time in transit subject to whatever the storage conditions if faced on its journey to the shelf I found it on. Yet another illustration of a major flaw in the world of canned wine.
So this was really not great value for the money, and not totally cohesive, but that said, it is cool to see something like this popping up in the canned wine category.
Okay, so clearly there’s a lot of factors that play against canned wine when it comes to ensuring you get a sip of something “good” when you crack one open. While that might not be a universal truth, given that we literally did not find a single can that was less than a year old (and almost all of them fell short in terms of acidity and/or smelled like outhouses when we gave them a swirl), it seems canned wine may be a difficult category to reliably navigate (even if there are some good examples out there). Some of these wines may have actually been pretty decent when initially canned, and had it been an option to get a fresh one, who knows, maybe these scores would be higher.
All in all, canned wines are going to be a pass for us, at least until things improve a little more. Perhaps mandated expiry dates?
What’s your take — do you have a canned wine you know and love? Have you found their quality to be consistently good, or are they often duds? Please tell us your thoughts in the comments, and if you have any recommendations for canned wines we missed that we should try, we want to know!
Until next time, HAPPY DRINKING PEOPLE.
Cheers!
Isaac & Zach
Tannic Panic! is the beer of Champagnes. SUBSCRIBE.
‘A mercifully short finish’. Classic. ❤️
drinking from the can adds a nice metallic finish