Tinned Wine - no thanks

The US trend of drinking canned wine has taken off in the UK. What was very "2016" in the US is now very "2018" in the UK. It is almost needless to say that I won't be joining in this trend. Tinning food and beverages is good for baked beans, tomatoes , soup and weak tasting lager. But, I must say that a tin of confit de canard  can taste superb; as did a tin of  choucroute which we ate the other night but without a canned wine.

Of course no self respecting wine blogger should reject new developments out of hand, so I bought a can of wine from a supermarket the other day to give it a try. I sampled a tin of organic Syrah  from the south of France. The wine and the supermarket shall remain unnamed. The wine cost £3.50 for 25cl. That's £10.50 for a bottle.

I poured out 2 small glasses to go with an organic roast chicken.  I tasted the wine in the usual way but was not impressed but was giving it the benefit of the doubt. My wife had no doubt: the wine was rubbish and it deserved to be poured away which I did.

We had paid a lot of money for a rather poor Vin de Pays which tasted acidic and rustic. At the supermarket you can buy a much better wine from Australia, the US or France for the same money:  a  good quality wine, in a glass bottle, which will go down well with good food.

Canned wine is a convenience and it is trendy but quite frankly you are being ripped off. A lot of the time the wine is cheap so the profit  margins are greater. Canning wine is also cheaper than bottling it so it improves the profit margins further. Using the term organic is a marketing ploy and claiming that it is environmentally friendly is also another marketing ploy. How often have you seen empty tins of lager littering your local park? Organic wine will not taste better if the wine is poorly produced.

There is no doubt that that you could be tempted to drink wine straight from the can at a party, a picnic  or on a train or bus - just like beer. You would be missing out as wine is best consumed from a glass so that you can appreciate the aroma better. The same can be said for craft beers. The can will hide the taste of the wine, but what difference does it make if the wine is rubbish. If you can't be bothered to take a cork screw with you when you go on a picnic then a good alternative would be use bottled wines with screw tops.

If ,you have got plenty of money and do not mind paying through the nose for inferior wine just for the convenience, then good on you. As far as I am concerned, I'll use a corkscrew or just undo a screw top.

https://www.chatelaine.com/food/drinks/food-trend-wines-in-a-can/ 

Plastic Corks

The other day I opened a bottle of Rioja from a famous retailer. It was of 2015 vintage. The wine had oxidised and was nearly fully on its way to becoming wine vinegar. I suspect that air had leached into the bottle through the seal of the plastic cork. The wine had been laid down. There was no way of telling that the cork was a plastic one and no warning on the bottle.

The idea of plastic corks was to prevent wine spoilage owing to fungal "infected" natural corks which render a musty taste to the wine and ruin it. Natural corks ,however, expand when the wine bottle is laid down to prevent air leaching into the bottles - but you run the risk of a corked wine.

Plastic corks do not guarantee that the wine will be protected from spoilage. If you suspect a wine has a plastic cork it maybe best to cut the top of the foil off the bottle. If it is sealed with a plastic cork , it will probably be best to drink the wine within a few months of purchase. Better quality wines will either be sealed with natural cork or a screw top. I have never had a problem with screw top wines but the seal could get compromised.

As a general rule it might be best to examine all bottles of wine for damage or leakage before buying. However, a wine sealed with a plastic cork will most of the time not reveal itself until you cut the capsule.