When A Wine's Mountain's Are Blue

I grew up in a Coors Light family. As long as I can remember, any significant family event, sports game or holiday has always been accompanied by Silver Bullets. Therefore, alcohol in a can is a no brainer for me. This is especially true if the design on the can changes color when it's cold.

Last quarter I received an email about a startup garage duo, our very own Sarah and Kendra, conducting product testing/customer feedback on canned wine. I had never heard of canned wine, but my lineage of canned alcohol consumption led me to sign up for the product feedback session. Here are a couple of the major takeaways I had from that event.

1. There is way more canned wine on the market than I thought. The night of the tasting Sarah and Kendra had at least 12 different canned types. Many of the wines were what I would call "beach wines," like sparkling wines or roses, the type of wine you might want on the beach. Others were of the much more traditional varieties cabs, chardonnays, etc. The wines were from more than a handful of companies that were experimenting with different sized cans and packaging types.  

2. The variety of canned wine packaging made it clear that different canned wine producers are going after different parts of the market. Going into the night, I assumed that canned wine was going to targeted towards young people who are doing some kind of activity that prevents them from having a class bottle of wine (hiking, swimming, pic-nicing, etc.). However, there were several canned wines whose intricate labels/packaging led me to believe that they are going after a more affluent customer, who is drinking the canned wine instead of a bottled wine for non-logistical reasons.

3. Canned wine isn't so bad. Keep in mind that this is coming from someone who knows they don't have a good palate, but I actually liked many of the wines. The cans are much easier to hold, open, transport and the wine tastes pretty good. I certainly felt less classy drinking wine from a can than from a bottle, but that's OK with me..... almost anything is a step up in class from Coors Light. :)

With All the Best Intentions

I find the ludicrous effect of the 21st amendment on the sale and distribution of alcohol in the United States fascinating.

When I went to look up the exact working of the 21st amendment, I was surprised by how short it was. Initially frustrated, I thought I was dealing with websites getting cute and truncating the notorious second section, but this is all there is: 

The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.

State control is a funny thing. I remember being shocked the first time I visited California and saw bottles of wine and liquor in a convenience store. It never occurred to me that the laws that prevented such an occurrence in New York were local ones. For those of you who don’t know, hard liquor and most can only be bought in liquor stores or wine shops. Grocery and convenience stores can carry beer and very bad “wine” that usually isn’t more than 5 or 6% ABV. I’m still slightly caught off-guard when I see the piles of wine bottles at my local CVS.

I’m struck by the parallels the 21st amendment has to the 13th, and how a succinct collection of words creates a strange legacy for the modern world. Section one of the 13th reads:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

The consequence of this is modern day slavery. Prisoners can be compelled to labor without the protections that other workers have, and for little to no compensation. While the crafters of this amendment lived in a time when they may have thought this was a justifiable punishment for crime, a much smaller proportion of the nation was arrested and convicted then. And if we remember that some percentage of incarcerated people did not commit the crimes for which they were imprisoned, we must contend with the fact that there are innocent people who are legally enslaved in 21st century America. 

Given the difficulty of changing the constitution, should enforcement mechanisms and loopholes really live there rather than in laws?

Let Our Vino Go!

The showdown over a $5.7B construction project that has brought the world's most (arguably) influential government to a standstill has found a way to hit us where it really hurts - in our glasses.

Along with the National Parks Service, the Department of Homeland Security, and many other government agencies that are being held hostage in the ongoing budget standoff, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) has shut its doors, meaning that rosé deliveries might be a little late this year. 

The Bureau is responsible for approving new alcoholic beverages and labels. Until its employees can come back to work, its Certificate of Label Approval (COLA) process that normally takes ~36 days could drag on for months. 

This poses a problem for domestic and international wineries that have barrels full of new blends just waiting to be bottled. Do they hold off while the TTB works through its backlog of COLAs post-shutdown, putting their entire bottling and shipping process months behind schedule, or go ahead with bottling and labeling, risking that the wine might ultimately be rejected? 

Beyond wineries, importers and distributors are seeing trouble brewing (well, fermenting), as well. While producers wait for COLAs and for USDA approval of international wines, wine critics can't receive samples that will let them shape what consumers want to drink this year, and the players responsible for getting those wines to retailers and restauranteurs are unable to decide what to stock next season. Particularly for international wines, that adds even more time between making perfectly crisp rosé and getting it into consumers' glasses.

So what will become of us this summer season? Will the poolsides of the Hamptons see ice buckets filled with blush-colored Côtes de Provence? Or will the captive bottles not be freed until long after poolside patrons have put away their white jeans (which, for the love of champagne, must be immediately after Labor Day)?

President Trump and Speaker Pelosi, we're begging you - let our vino go!