Tag Archives: screwcaps

Will canned wine solve all of the wine business’ problems?

canned wineProbably not, but canned wine could find acceptance and a profitable niche — just like 3-liter boxes like Black and Bota

Canned wine is supposed to be the next big thing. Sales were up 52 percent last year and its growth far out-paced every other part of the wine business. To hear its supporters talk, we’ll all be sipping from cans soon – not just around the pool or at a picnic, but at the dinner table and in restaurants.

Which seems difficult to believe, and not just because I’ve tasted canned wine and found much of it lacking (and, truth be told, so have many of its supporters, but usually off the record). Rather, it’s because cans are such a small part of the market, about 0.2 percent according to Nielsen. How can cans take over the world starting from there?

So the Wine Curmudgeon looked for statistics and facts and talked to people who research that stuff. The full story will appear in the Beverage Media trade magazine in a month or so, and I’ll link to it here.

Until then, a few thoughts about cans:

• Consumers don’t think much of quality. A recent Mintel survey found that consumers see cans as significantly inferior to screwcap wine, and they’ve been bashing screwcaps for 20 years. Only 13 percent said wine in cans was as good as wine in bottles, compared to 23 percent for premium boxes (like Black and Bota) and 31 percent for screwcaps.

• Supporters say cans will help younger consumers switch to wine from beer and spirits. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence of this, says Christan Miller of Full Glass Research, who is one of the smartest people in his field. Yes, says Miller, younger consumers are more willing to try cans, but they already drink wine. They’re just not as stuffy as the Baby Boomers, who overwhelmingly prefer a bottle with some kind of cork.

• Speaking of which, the traditional glass bottle closed with some kind of cork is still about 75 percent of the market. That’s an amazing figure, given how long we’ve had screwcaps and quality wine in boxes.

Miller says – and his argument makes sense – that he doesn’t think “cans are going to be a large category, but I think they will be a permanent one.” In this, he expects cans to eventually become as popular as 3-liter boxes like Black and Bota. They have about three percent of the market, according to Nielsen.

So no, not the next big thing. But a profitable one for producers who understand the niche.

More on canned wine:
• Wine in a can
• The future of wine packaging

It’s not the quality of the wine – it’s the sound of the cork popping

wine vintagesThe latest cork industry study claims we don’t care about quality, but only about the romance of the cork

Corks almost always score better than screwcaps in consumer surveys, which can usually be explained by the source of the survey: the cork industry. Hence this study, also paid for by the cork industry, but that actually sheds light on all this foolishness. The reason so many of us claim to prefer corks? It’s not the quality of the wine, but the sound of the cork popping.

Can the wine business get any screwier?

British researchers asked 140 people to rate two identical wines. They tasted one wine after hearing the sound of a cork popping and one wine after hearing a screwcap being opened. They were then asked to actually open both bottles and rate the wines again. Overall, reports thedrinksbusiness trade magazine, participants rated the same wine as 15 percent better when served under a cork than a screwcap.

Again, these were the same wines, and the only difference was the sound played when the wine was tasted. Or, as the study’s lead researcher said: “The sound and sight of a cork being popped sets our expectations before the wine has even touched our lips, and these expectations then anchor our subsequent tasting experience.”

So nuts to what the wine tastes like. Bring on the cork popping!

Which raises yet another question – why would the cork business claim wine drinkers don’t care about quality, but only the sound of the cork? That’s incredibly cynical, even for the wine business.

The other thing to note here? Several people will cancel their email subscription to the blog after they read this, which happens every time I find corks lacking. Which then makes me wonder if the study is really on to something.

Winebits 501: Wine closures edition

wine closuresThis week’s wine news: All about wine closures, including a Coravin for screwcaps, a brain wave test, and wine condoms

• Even for screwcaps: The Coravin, the $300 wine opener that made a huge impression with wine geeks, restaurants, and the Winestream Media, will debut a product for screwcap wines later this year. This is an intriguing development, given that screwcap wines aren’t supposed to require a pricey opener. Because, after all, they’re screwcaps. But the company saw a need, so developed a product that works with the metal caps. The catch? You need the $300 Coravin and a package of $30 proprietary screwcaps to make it work – which is more than I would spend. But the system claims to keep the wine fresh for up to three months, which sounds more like something for a restaurant than the Wine Curmudgeon’s house. Opened wine doesn’t last three days, let alone three months.

• Corks vs. screwcaps: Oxford University researchers will study wine drinkers’ brains while they sip to determine whether wine tastes better if it’s closed with corks or screw caps. The story, though touting brain wave machines, doesn’t say if the wine drinkers will taste the wine blind or if they’ll know ahead of time whether the wine has a cork or a screwcap, something that would make a tremendous difference given the prejudice against screwcaps. In addition, the study is being sponsored by a cork trade group, and we know what that means, don’t we?

• Such a prophylactic: Yes, wine condoms. The idea is to slip them over the bottle opening just like one would slip a Trojan on a man. The product is supposed to make leftover wine easier to store in the refrigerator; however, I didn’t ask for a sample from the publicist who sent the email. For one thing, I rarely have leftover wine to put away. For another, screwcaps. For a third, if I liked the product, I’d have to write about it. And I’ve been writing long enough to know how difficult that would be to do without resorting to juvenile antics. The prose on the website is bad enough.

Winebits 492: Corks, wine trends, wine gadgets

wine trendsThis week’s wine news: Another winemaker says corks are outdated, plus more silly wine trends and wine gadgets

• One more for our side: Cork is “a completely outdated“ technology, says a top Australian winemaker. Thedrinksbusiness website reports that Kym Milne, chief winemaker at Bird in Hand in the Adelaide Hills, told the London Wine Fair that “As wines age cork gives enormous variability – try 12 bottles from the same case and you’ll have 12 different wines. There’s too much variation from putting a piece of wood in the end of a bottle.” Needless to say, all of the wines at Bird in Hand – including the US$70 Nest Egg shiraz – use screwcaps.

• Who knew? Who says sommeliers can be stuffy and are out of touch with ordinary wine drinkers? That certainly isn’t the case for the trio of wine professionals who appeared in this Food & Wine article about wine trends, which included the dreaded blue wine. They didn’t exactly hate blue wine, which surprised me, but I was impressed with this: “The trend of making wine for people who hate wine confounds me.” Welcome to the wine business, pal, where that seems to be the goal entirely too often.

• Who is kidding who? How do you not get drunk? Don’t drink too much wine. Unless, of course, you’re an entrepreneur in Dallas who says you should put his magic wand in your booze. Read the story at the link at your peril; I don’t have the energy to comment on it. What I do know is that I have many better things to do with $25 – or even $70 – that the gizmo costs. Many, many, many better things.

Winebits 469: U.S. wine consumption, corks, flavored tannins

U.S. wine consumptionThis week’s wine news: U.S. wine consumption lags the world, plus corks make a comeback and fake tannins

• 16th is pretty sad: U.S. per capita wine consumption, a little more than a bottle a month, is 16th among the word’s 21 biggest wine consuming countries. Which is depressing enough, since we had a wine revolution in this country over the past 20 years. But even more depressing – that figure has been flat since I started writing the blog 10 years ago. We can talk about how much the country drinks overall and we can talk about how much we spend, but as I have written many times before, Americans aren’t all that interested in wine and most of the wine we drink is consumed by a hard-cord group of frequent wine drinkers. And until we make wine more accessible and easier to understand, that will continue to be the case.

• A technologically perfect cork? Talk to winemakers, and they’ll tell you that advances in cork manufacture have all but eliminated cork taint – the chemical compound that gets into wine from a flawed cork and ruins the wine. This story from Reuters expands on the subject, and talks about how cork is making a comeback with producers at the expense of screw caps. Cork is used on about 60 percent of wine bottles in the U.S. and around 70 percent worldwide; the remainder are plastic and composite corks (10 percent) and screwcaps (20 percent). Even this, though, is much less than the late 20th century,when cork controlled 95 percent of the market. The story misses one point, which goes to the heart of the U.S. wine consumption problem. No matter how good corks are as a closure, they aren’t as easy to open as a screwcap.

• Just like fake oak: Tannins occur naturally in wine from the tannic acid in the grape’s skins, stems, and seeds, and well-made wines at any price must take tannins into account. But adding fake tannins – literally, a bottle of tannic acid – is not uncommon, as this news release demonstrates. “Oenotan is an all-natural, water soluble, freeze-dried, tannin crystal made from 2 year air-dried French oak. … is available in three distinct profiles, Authentique, Vanilla and Mocha.” Yummy, huh? And people wonder why the wine business doesn’t want ingredient labels.

wine value 2018

One more reason why we need screwcaps

You can’t burn your house down when your wine is closed with a screwcap

One of the the Wine Curmudgeon’s many quixotic battles is the crusade to replace corks with screwcaps, which are not only easier to use but provide a better seal. And when one opens as many bottles of wine as I do, the romance of corks is about as romantic as a can of chili.

Which brings us to this video, in which sommelier Jonathan Ross uses heated tongs to open a bottle of wine. I can’t decide if this is more dangerous than using a sabre, or just as dangerous in a completely different way. Probably more dangerous, since you can’t burn your house down with a sabre.

And, of course, totally unnecessary with a screwcap.

The video is courtesy of Business Insider on YouTube, with a tip o’ the WC’s fedora to our old pal Jameson Fink when he was with Grape Collective.

The future of wine packaging

wine packagingCan the idea that canned wine is the next big thing in wine packaging

People who are supposed to know these things insist that wine packaging is about to undergo a revolution – specifically, that canned wine is the next big thing and will sooner rather than later compete with bottles as the package of choice.

In this, they are wrong. Wine packaging has remained the same for centuries – a bottle with a cork – and there is absolutely no reason to believe that canned wine’s future is any different than screwcaps or boxes. It will occupy a niche, and lots of people will like it. But most of us won’t even notice it. The wine business in the U.S. has spent almost 100 years teaching us that we have to buy wine in a 750 ml bottle with a cork, and you don’t undo that overnight.

Or, as one of the more clear-sighted analysts wrote: “In most countries, that packaging (whether it’s a $5 or $5,000 wine) is going to be a glass bottle, even though any number of containers can be used.”

So why the enthusiasm for canned wine? First, because it has grown exponentially over the past couple of years, up 125 percent in the year through the middle of 2016. Second, it’s something that should appeal to the two generations of wine drinkers younger than the Baby Boomers, who grew up on canned soft drinks and juice boxes and who aren’t supposed to be as fussy about bottles as the rest of us. Third, because the people who do trend analysis wouldn’t have anything to write about if they didn’t find a trend, and it isn’t easy to find trends in an industry as old-fashioned as wine.

In fact, here’s what the prognosticators don’t tell you about canned wine:

• “After years of packaging innovations, the traditional 750 ml wine bottle is more important to the domestic wine industry than ever.” The number of 750ml bottles sold increased 41 percent from 2010 to 2014, which is the same period that overall wine sales in the U.S., as measured by bottles sold, was up just 11 percent. This is premiumization’s work; who is going to pay $25 for a bottle of wine in can or box? Meanwhile, sales have fallen dramatically for the very cheapest wines, which lend themselves best to cans.

• That 125 percent growth was from a very tiny base. All told, canned wine accounted for $6.4 million in a $55 billion business, or about one-tenth of one percent.

• Retailers don’t like canned wine. Store shelves are designed to sell 750 ml bottles, and canned wine doesn’t fit on the shelves. That’s what happened to boxed wine, which was supposed to be the next big thing a decade ago. Retailers could never figure out how to display it, and so they shoved it to the back of the store.

• Canned wine hasn’t solved the value/price problem. Much of it is more expensive than bottled wine, since we’re paying for convenience. But the quality of the wine usually isn’t worth the added cost. Much of the canned wine I’ve tasted was junk that would cost $4 or $5 for a 25-ounce bottle, not $5 for a 12-ounce can. Compare this to boxed wine, which has improved in quality and does offer value – and still remains a small part of the market, about three percent.

In the end, know that screw caps, which offer as much convenience as a can without any added cost to the consumer, have been around for decades. And they still account for just 20 percent of the market. How are cans going to do better than that?

Image courtesy of Whitney Anderson, using a Creative Commons license