When we last surveyed the canned wine landscape, back in 2021, we didn’t really know what to expect. Still in its adolescence, the category had only just begun to shed the kitschy supermarket image associated with early efforts such as the Sofia Mini, the ubiquitous single-serve sparkler (complete with a straw adhered to the can) introduced by Francis Ford Coppola Winery in 2004.
Imagine our surprise when we discovered the miraculous influx of offbeat, ambitious examples that had materialized on shelves seemingly overnight. As I observed at the time, situating this revolution within the wider rise of natural wine, canned wine has exploded into a full spectrum of styles, from piquette to pét-nat.
So when we recently gathered at Punch HQ to renew the exercise, we had every reason for optimism. Judging by the kaleidoscopic array of aluminum offerings assembled before us—many of them decked out in the same trippy cartoon labels that represent natural wine’s visual lingua franca—it struck us how rapidly the playing field had expanded even further. Overwhelmingly, the options now include a disproportionate number of natural wines.
In retrospect, it was probably inevitable that progressive natural winemakers, both foreign and domestic, would take to capturing “glou-glou” in a can. Those wines already aspire to quench one’s thirst, take well to a chill and avoid excess alcohol and extraction. And if making wine more accessible is central to the movement’s mission, what could telegraph those ideals better than a lovable, chuggable, low-key can of the stuff?
Theoretically, this is cause for celebration. As with so many utopian dreams, however, praxis tends to be the tricky part. For all their utilitarian charm, cans don’t exactly provide optimal conditions for the storage and transport of wine. The high potential for heat damage makes it critical to secure the freshest can possible—especially when the contents of said can were produced in the complete absence of sulfur. Sadly, a high percentage of the cans in our rotation suffered from an all-too-familiar set of afflictions (mouse, brett, volatile acidity) that came close to triggering a nostalgia for the days of the Sofia Mini.
There’s a time and place to engage in a meaningful conversation about the cultural relativity of taste and the increasingly subjective criteria for determining what qualifies as a flawed wine. But that time and place will never be when you’re sweating by the pool on a hot August day, and all you want is a freshly cracked can of crisp, cold wine from the bottom of the cooler.
Nevertheless, we persisted, eventually making our way through nearly 40 different cans. In the end, the task afforded us a useful opportunity to reflect upon a timely question: Now that we’re canning wines of every possible style, from the standard mass-market fare to the weirdest fringes of the avant-garde, what do we actually want a canned wine to be?
There’s no single answer. But it wasn’t enough, we determined, for any individual example to be objectively tasty wine; it needed to justify its packaging. Each wine that made our final cut succeeded not only as a high-quality wine, but specifically as a high-quality canned wine. Different from one another as they may be, it’s also worth noting that every wine mentioned below delivered enough depth and substance to hold its own over the course of a meal, occupying some version of that sweet spot between complexity and crushability. Without any further ado, here are the cans that deserve a spot in your cooler this summer.
