A delightful canned sparkling wine to beat the summer heat

Alternative wine packages, like cans and boxes, are making serious inroads into the global wine market with cans taking the current spotlight. Canned wines like this delightful sparkler from Washington have been around for years, but their current explosion in popularity is due to a generational shift in how people think about what’s left behind once you finish your drink.

Younger audiences have fewer hangups about wine packaging than their elders and are far more eco-conscious. Many still respect the gravitas of wine bottles and corks for special occasions but love the convenience of cans for everyday wines. After all, cans are permitted in many places where glass is restricted, like at the beach, on hikes, or even poolside. Bottles are heavy, awkward, and fragile and the cost of transporting them contributes significantly to their retail prices. Cans weigh up to 40 times less than glass, and they’re also far more sustainable. Aluminum cans are made with roughly 70% recycled content nowadays, and people recycle their cans 20% more often than they recycle their glass.

It’s true that the wines available in cans have not always been of high quality, but our current generational shift is leading enterprising vintners to think outside of the bottle on that front too; visitors to Napa Valley can now splurge on a ritzy, collectible Oakville cabernet sauvignon for an eye-popping $65 per 8-ounce can, the equivalent of $200 per bottle. It remains to be seen whether cans have a future for prestige wines, but tasty, well-made wines in a can are already within reach. Even the most skeptical wine lover would struggle to find fault with this perfectly pleasant bubbly from the forward thinkers at House Wines. Brisk and bracingly dry, its flavors of crisp Fuji apples and green Anjou pears are clean and palate-cleansing, without a hint of metallic aftertaste. Do be careful, though — these 12-ounce cans are easy to down in one sitting, but each contains the same volume as a half-bottle of wine, or two and a half standard glasses.