Wine & Spirits - June 2018 - 10

Pop-Top Fizz

by Allison Bart

After Tyler Colman filed his story on the meteoric rise of canned wines, we convened a tasting panel
to put a few to the test. We focused solely on sparkling versions-both straight wines and spritzers-because
we figured there's no better application for a can than as a portable, lightweight, single serving of bubbles.
After tasting 23 of them, our panelists were a little less sure, as a good chunk of these wines were hard to swallow. "If Gatorade and Mr.
Bubble had a love child, it would be this," Josh Wesson of Best Bottles remarked about one; Christy Frank, who runs Copake Wine Works in
the Berkshires, compared another to rotten lilies.
But we found several well worth stashing into the bow of your kayak, or stuffing into your backpack for your next hiking trip. Or you
might just want to have a four-pack in the fridge for after-work refreshment: If there's one thing the can does well, it eliminates the guilt of
not finishing a bottle of bubbles in one go.
The scene: Seven panelists tasting 23 sparkling wines and spritzers (9 white, 6 rosé, 8 spritzers) from 15 companies.
The tasting: We started by tasting each wine blind, out of glasses, to better assess appearance and aromatics as well as flavor. Then we
brought all the cans out to taste straight from the can and see if that changed our perceptions. It also allowed us to look at the labels: Eyegrabbing artistry on cans far outpaces what shows up on most wine bottles.
The findings: Overall, the wines with more neutral flavors were the most quaffable-especially when we considered context and imagined
drinking them ice cold and outdoors.
The drawbacks: A lot of these wines were oversulfured, and had headache-inducing off-scents and flavors. As Dan Bjugstad of Pasquale Jones
in NYC noted, many of them benefited from decanting into a glass-not that anyone is going to actually do that outside of a formal tasting.

The Standouts

The upsides: There is still a lot of room in this growing market for standout, quality wines in cans. Considering the portability and serving
size, we agreed that if the industry resolves the sulfur issues and puts really good wine in a can, we'd buy it. And we found four cans of fizz
that we would buy today.

Lila Vino Frizzante
Blurring the line between
a crisp soda and a wine,
this Italian sparkler is fruitforward and refreshing,
with a lemon-rind
bitterness to cut through
the melon sweetness.
$12/four 250-ml cans;
lilawines.com
WINE & SPIRITS

Ramona Ruby Grapefruit
Spritzer
Bittersweet and aromatic, like
an Aperol spritz, the citrus
stands out in this Sicilian
spritzer from Jordan Salcito,
who also works in wine at
NYC's Momofuku.
$20/four 250-ml cans;
drinkramona.com

JUNE 2018

Underwood The Bubbles
From Oregon's Union Wine
Company, this was one of the
fizziest and most refreshing
of the bunch, with subdued
notes of tropical fruit, apple
and pear.
$28/four 250-ml cans;
unionwinecompany.com

Underwood Rosé Bubbles
Neon pink, this is brisk,
clean and even frothier than
its white counterpart, with
notes of sweet cherry and tart
cranberry that would make it
a good choice for barbecue.
$28/four 250-ml cans;
unionwinecompany.com

http://www.unionwinecompany.com http://www.unionwinecompany.com http://www.lilawines.com http://www.drinkramona.com

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