The Can Makers Virtual Wine Taste Test

Canned wine is fast becoming big business. The UK market is now worth more than £3.6 million – an annual increase of 125% to August 2019.

The popularity of the canned wine format follows the trend in the US, where the category has seen exponential growth in the past five years. Not only is the US market now worth more than £53 million, last year over two hundred canned wines from all over the world flexed their muscles at the first annual International Canned Wine Competition held in California.

To date, the number of UK wine producers who have explored the packaging format remains small in comparison, but those who have are reporting huge success with their brands. And it’s not just the key players either. A number of niche producers now can wine, with a growing number of supermarkets and independent merchants slowly catching on to this ever-growing trend.

So, what's changed? For starters, canning technology has improved dramatically in recent years. Aluminium cans are now lined with a water-based polymer, which means you don’t get any of that metallic taste. What’s more, consumers today are less precious about traditional packaging formats – wine doesn’t have to come out of a bottle with a cork, in fact, many restaurants have already made the switch to kegs for their house wines.

Canned wines are aimed at two markets: people looking to drink on the move, on trains or at festivals for example, and people consuming the contents as you would from a bottle, but who only want a glass or two.

For the sustainably conscious consumer, the canned format performs far better from an environmental point of view, too. They're lighter and easy to recycle – meaning they boast a much smaller carbon footprint than other packaging formats. What’s more, aluminium drinks cans are the most recycled beverage container in the world, with 76% of aluminium cans recycled across the UK.

However, despite the clear environmental benefits and various success stories of the growing category, the perception still exists amongst some that wine in cans is in some way inferior to bottled wine – an opinion we at Can Makers want to change.

To show that wine in a can tastes great, and dispel a few myths and preconceptions surrounding wine in a can, we brought together five of the UK’s leading wine critics for a Virtual Wine Taste Test.

Their verdict? See the video below…