Sunday, March 11, 2018

Canned Wine -- More Obscure Regulation Hampering the Industry

Previous posts have discussed the emergence of canned wines, and there's a lot to consider around the challenges and opportunities of selling wines in new, non-traditional packaging or formats. However, an interesting obscure twist poses a significant challenge for canned wine: it needs a special can. The reason is that there are legally authorized "standards of fill" for wine that determine how much wine should go in each packaged serving.  Those are as follow:

3 liters.
1.5 liters.
1 liter.
750 milliliters.
375 milliliters.
187 milliliters.
100 milliliters.
500 milliliters.
50 milliliters.

A standard bottle is 750 milliliters, which helps keep bottles uniform for consumers and seems like a reasonable regulation at face value. However, that same standard does not apply to beer. With the U.S.'s backward history with the imperial measurement system, the standard beer can that you'll find in the grocery store is actually 12 ounces. That means that the majority of infrastructure for canning beverages is for the 12 ounce size, and requires a specialized (read: more expensive) canning solution to accommodate the 375 milliliter cans for wine.

This give some interesting insight into why you'll never find a 250 milliliter can like the one sold by Backpack Wine available outside of a four-pack: 250 milliliters isn't a standard fill, so they need to be grouped in order to hit that 1 liter standard. This also sheds some light on why we might not see canned wine take off until either the packaging industry or wine regulation catches up.

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2 comments:

  1. NicoleMarch 14, 2018 at 11:37 PM

    Thanks for this research, Ann - that's really interesting. I understand that the regulators are trying to keep serving measurements consistent for consumers, but I wonder how many consumers are really aware of how much wine is in a can. I have seen the Underwood cans that advertise containing "two glasses" of wine, but they look much smaller to my eye than half a bottle so I would think that consumers might often fall into the trap of consuming whatever the package size is in front of them rather than understanding that each can is equivalent of two glasses (not that two glasses is a bad serving)!

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  2. AnonymousMarch 15, 2018 at 8:50 AM

    It's a great question -- the can size that we're used to definitely doesn't feel like two glasses, but you're right that Underwood is in fact 375 mL which is exactly half a bottle. Totally agreed that it feels kind of unbelievable, especially compared to the physical weight of a glass bottle. Will be an interesting challenge for canned wine companies!

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