What more evidence do we need?
(this post is a follow-up to “Paper Wine Bottle to Rescue Wine Sales” and an interesting, but now unfortunately lost < and FOUND again>, conversation on Facebook about resistance to innovation)

Quality wines in a can from Underwood (c) David L Reamer
The Drinks Business writes an article about a packaging innovation and (cynically?) makes sure to include a reference to cheaper commercial beer brands in the first sentence.
Then, when the WSET, bastion of the international wine trade’s education, decides to post the article to their facebook page they get 20+ comments of which, to date, 95% are negative and yet not one person has tasted the wine or even seen a can.
Reactions include:
– homeless people all over the world are cheering hahahahahahahha
– Hideous !!! No romance no enjoyment .. We finally except (sic) screw caps and now this insulting slap in the face ! What’s wrong with the bottle all of a sudden ?
– how to appreciate the colour of the wine? what about influencing the taste using beerification? I wont buy it!
Following my recent post on paper wine bottles, and while the Wine Vision conference is apparently bemoaning the lack of innovation in the wine business and our inability to reach consumers, when anyone tries something new it is immediately rejected. Why?
- You can’t test the quality of a wine in a bottle any more than in a can (except for the recent invention of the Coravin)
- You don’t have to drink it from the can any more than you drink it from the bottle, you still can choose to use a Zalto glass if you want
- Wine is aged in stainless steel, what can be wrong with temporary storage / transport in an airtight can?
If anyone had bothered to look, people who HAVE tried the Underwood product seem to like it. Here’s Cool Hunting for example:
“We found the product to be novel and the experience enjoyable, but we were surprised by how great the wine was—causing us to rethink previous notions about bottling.”
Come on people, let’s be a bit more positive. What is really stopping us? We might actually do something that is cool for a change