Alfresco drinks in tins and pouches that won’t weigh you down
M&S Coteaux Varois en Provence, France 2022 (£17.50, 1.5l, Marks & Spencer) Quite apart from its contents, the glass wine bottle as an object can be a very beautiful thing, and when it comes to seeing a wine through years or even decades of slow maturation it still can’t be beaten. But it isn’t always the most practical of tools. One issue is weight. Even if many producers (if not, sadly, all) have belatedly realised that it makes little environmental sense to use the heaviest glass available and are ditching the 800g+ behemoths, tThere are times when even a lightweight 300g 75cl glass vessel adds rather too much to a picnic basket or backpack. A little too much danger, too, if you’re even a fraction as clumsy as me. So, I’m glad, not least as we enter official picnic season, that the quality of wine being sold in what the industry describes as ‘alternative packaging’ continues to improve, meaning that an eminently shareable, classically soft, creamy Provence rosé such as M&S’s is, in pouch form, now much easier and safer to transport, if rather less lovely to look at.
Les Dauphins Côtes du Rhône Grenache Syrah, France NV (£3.49, 25cl, Waitrose) For the past two years, Waitrose has shared the precise weight of all its packaging when it shows off its range of wines, beers and spirits at the bi-annual tastings it puts on for the press. The differences are eye-opening: the (empty) packaging of a 2.25 litre bag-in-box of aptly named Vibrant & Grassy Chilean White Wine 2022 (£14.95) weighs 150g; if the same amount of wine was bottled in the lightest bottles on display (3 x 300g), the packaging would be six times heavier. Even more striking, the packaging for a 25cl can of brambly-spicy Les Dauphins Côtes du Rhône is 15g, while the 75cl bottle used for the same producer’s richer, gutsier (but that’s beside the point here) Costières de Nîmes 2022 (£8.49, Waitrose) is 395g. All these weight worries are about much more than consumer convenience. The transportation of heavy bottles contributes enormously and (in almost all cases) unnecessarily to increasing wine’s carbon footprint. Shedding a few kilos is essential if the wine industry’s constant references to sustainability are going to amount to more than greenwashing.
Croft Pink & Tonic, Portugal NV (£2.50, 25cl, Booths; Amazon; oxfordwine.co.uk) An intriguing spin-off from the wine world’s new acceptance of alternative packaging has been to usher in a rather looser, less reverent approach to the product in what has always been a rather conservative trade with an allergic reaction to change and new ideas. Only very recently, the mere idea of putting wine in a can was beyond the pale – I still remember the kerfuffle among prosecco producers when an Austrian firm launched Rich Prosecco in a can in the mid-2000s. That this was a form of sacrilege that would do untold damage to prosecco’s image as a quality wine was widely accepted, although looking back I can see that at least some of the fuss was related to a certain snobbery over the prominent presence of Paris Hilton in the brand’s marketing. These days, even venerable institutions, such as the Fladgate Partnership, the family-run firm behind distinguished ports Taylor’s, Fonseca and Croft, are using cans for products – such as their version of an Aperol spritz, the softly bittersweet, pink grapefruit-tangy blend of pink port and tonic, Croft Pink & Tonic – that, just a few years ago, would have been inconceivable coming from such a traditional producer.
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