Shattering my snobbish expectations

YOU expect commodities such as cat food to be sold in cans (by what measure is cat food sold? Purr can).

My expectation was that wine in a can would be horrible. In my mind’s eye I envisioned the acid in wine being an unnatural partner with an aluminium can.

Acids corrode many different kinds of metals or wear them away through chemical processes.

So, when shopping for a suitable wine to have at my tennis club’s New Year’s Eve party, I surprised myself by buying four cans of Pizzini spritz rosé from Vintage Cellars in Manuka at $23. That’s a litre of wine in total. It is a rosé based on sangiovese. Also available was pinot grigio with a spritz and prosecco.

What the heck, I thought, give it a go. It’s a new year and new experiences should be embraced. Plus Pizzini is one of my favourite winemakers. Halliday rates Pizzini as a five-star winery. I very much like the Pietra Rossa King Valley sangiovese, a wine not presently directed to the canned market.

The night of consumption was organised around tennis from 10pm and ending the year with drinks and snacks after play. I brought some cheese and a couple of dips and the cans of wine were in a chiller bag. I gave a can to a mate to try.

“Great, its not sweet and it’s a refreshing drink after running around. Much better than those pre-mixed drinks in a can which are often sugar hits,” he said.

“Yep,” I said, “context is everything.”

The rosé had quite a bite at 9.8 per cent alcohol by volume. It had a good, clean finish. I was surprised and glad that my somewhat snobbish expectations had been shattered.

I called Pizzini wines and spoke with Natalie

Pizzini’s wine in a can… “We could see a trend starting overseas where wine people were looking at alternatives to 750ml bottles,” said Natalie Pizzini.

Pizzini, who is a director of the company. She told me that they had decided to market wine in a can in February 2020 just after the bushfire crisis and heading into covid.

“We could see a trend starting overseas where wine people were looking at alternatives to 750ml bottles,” she said.

“At the same time, Coles were also looking at an opportunity of marketing wine in a can.

“We decided that we would attract a new consumer, young people are not wedded to stereotypes. But we also decided that the wine would not be of lesser quality even though wine in a can might be perceived as a lesser product.

“To take a risk in this new format, you had to have a guaranteed sales channel outside of your own traditional one and, with the Coles outlets, growth in sales has continued and canned wine has been our best-selling product over the last three years.

“Part of the success was going into covid, where drinking alone suited drinking out of a can. We really hit the market there.”

I asked Natalie about the longevity of wine in a can.

“One of the reasons we are comfortable is the quick turnover. It’s bought to consume in the next week, you don’t let it lie for a year before you drink it,” she said.

“Trusting the supplier of the can is key and that’s a promise of 18 months. Each of the cans has a use-by date. We usually have three canning runs in a year. We’ll stick with it – every part of the can and the packaging is recyclable.”

Her final comment was that the winemaking process was exactly the same except the spritz is added at the canning stage.

I’ll try it again, especially after a game of tennis on a hot day.

“A wonderful gift may not be wrapped as you expect.” – Jonathan

Lockwood Huie