When I did a round-up of the best canned wines last summer, I struggled to find many I’d be prepared to drink myself. This year, however, the situation is much better – but now the problem is availability: a lot of the more interesting cans are sold out, which suggests there’s an unmet demand.
Of course, I’m not really the target audience, which is defined by Alexander McNair of the recently launched Wild Steps range as “25- to 39-year-old millennial and Gen Z wine drinkers”. I’d imagine that many of them would be perfectly happy to have anything from a can, so long as its cold – they’re unlikely to pour it into a glass, for a start – but McNair says they’ve taken a more ambitious approach to the liquid they’re putting in tins. The malbec in today’s pick, for example, is made by the Argentinian producer Zuccardi, although they’re not making a feature of that. What they are stressing, however, are their environmental and social credentials: the wines are made from organically grown grapes on sustainably run vineyards, and 10% of the profit from each can goes to charity (at the moment, the British Beekeepers Association and The Woodland Trust). As importantly for me, at least, it’s a wine that any malbec lover would be happy to drink.
