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- You know, when you walk by that kind of rather good looking man or woman at the pool that smells of suntan oil.
- I'm usually the good looking man or woman, so I don't know what he's talking about.
- Yes, he does go to a pool that's at an old folks home. Currently that pool is very empty.
- Yep, it is. It's a lonely, lonely time for me.
- With the suntan lotion, that's what-
- Yeah, we digress. Hello and welcome to Cellar Rats into Seller Rats. Once again, it's a show that's made by wine makers, but you don't have to be one to understand what the H we're talking about.
- And what might your name be?
- I'm Jesse Inman.
- And I'm Aaron Inman.
- And today we're going to be talking about none other than canned wines.
- I think it's brilliant. I mean, I'm active, I'm gesturing with my hands and I don't feel restricted. I mean, if I was holding wine glass right now, I'd be spilling wine all over the goddamn place.
- It would get everywhere.
- Now, Lucky Rock Wine Co., which is us two. We love canned wines. Affordable, crushable, portable, recyclable. Been told that's good for the planet.
- Indeed. But are they any good?
- We're gonna find out. So, the first experiment today is going to be tasting two wines from similar growing areas, similar price points, basically, same price per ounce. And we're gonna see if there's any differences, which one we like more.
- Yeah, and then we're going to taste five different canned wines, and kind of do the same thing. It's a two-fer today. So basically we're seeing if canned wines, if you can tell the difference in a bottle and not, and then assessing canned wines and general quality.
- Okay, for experiment number one we are going to taste two Chardonnays from the Willamette Valley. One of them is Averaen, and the other one is Just Enough. One of them is in a bottle. One of them is from a can. We don't know which is which, and we're going to use our sniffers to find out.
- Yeah, we were kind of excited to try some canned wines, and I think this is the first one Aaron came across. So, we'll stick our nose in there and see how she goes. Okay.
- All right. So, wine.. Do you want to go into wine one first?
- Wine one, sure.
- Wine one.
- Mm, smells pretty good. And actually this one I'm just guessing is the canned wine because it has just a little bit of effervescence. And a lot of times they'll put a little bit of spritz in there to keep the can from getting soft.
- Yeah, the trigger in the can. I called it something else in prison but..
- Trigger me timbers.
- It's got a..
- Another thing that backs up the cans is sometimes, just like screw caps, you have to be careful with reduction, but this is interesting.
- Yeah, it doesn't have any like tinny qualities or any canned quality and finishes with like, a kind of a nice toasty kind of pie crust, butter.
- Yeah, there's definitely some wood on it.
- Yeah, so it's well made wine. This is going to be wine number two. Has some nice minerality. A little bit of, also has a little bit of dried pineapple, tropical.
- Yeah, it's got a little malactic, little buttery, a little creamy, a little oaky. So, I think these have similar qualities to them. Although, I find this one a little bit more pleasing.
- If I didn't know that one of these was from a can, I would think if these were both from a bottle.
- Yeah, there's no reason to believe it's from a can.
- Yeah, I think on this one, it wasn't that hard. I'm gonna say wine one was from the can.
- A hundred percent. First of all, because of the slight reduction and the little bit of effervescence, but those are the real telltale signs. Otherwise I don't know if I'd be able to tell that one over the other was from a can, but there was some little notes that I guess winemakers can kind of pick up on.
- The fruit on number one was also just a little bit, like, fresher, almost like Sauvignon Blanc-y, a little more aromatic that way, that I think maybe the can helped preserve some of that.
- Hey, y'all. If you're all still watching, you want to give us a subscribe? That'd be sweet.
- You found us funny, informative, entertaining. None of the above. Just like to waste your time. Shoot us a like, share, subscribe to our channel.
- Yeah, and then also you can join our newsletter for updates on, we have plenty of content, blogs, emails, et cetera, promotions. So, that's a great way to keep in touch.
- And you never know, maybe we'll be canning a wine.
- We actually are. So, first off, we're going to try Nomadica. This is a Chardonnay. Aaron came across this when searching for cans, and maybe he'll tell us a little bit about it.
- Yeah, so today we're gonna be tasting a 2018 Paso Robles organic vineyard Chardonnay. Nomadica is a 100% canned brand. It's a Sommelier owned. It's female owned. And their whole thing is like bringing you higher end wines in can. Which is, you know, a couple of years ago would have seemed like an oxymoron, but now is a little bit more relevant. It runs about 20 a bottle. So, anyways, let's give it a try. I've had this wine one other time when I ordered it just to open it up, to see how it, how it tasted.
- Got just a little bit of reduction on it. And I think when people say reduction, they automatically think bad, but reductiveness can actually be beneficial to the wine. Sometimes it's too stinky, sometimes it's nice, but sometimes it helps maintain freshness, but there's a little bit reduction, but not in a bad way. It almost makes it come off like minerality. That's surprisingly good.
- Has a little bit of like, kind of dried papaya, kind of dried tropical food on the finish. It's nice wine. I think, especially once that little bit of reduction blows off, which blew off here in a couple minutes, super tasty for the price. Great single serving option. This is about a glass and a half.
- And that's the coolest thing about canned wine is, if you don't want to smash a whole bottle by your self, there's a, what? 1.3 glasses-ish in a can, give or take. But they're about eight ounces. So, this is Just Enough Chardonnay. Aaron's gonna do a little description about it.
- We used it in the first experiment between can and bottle, but we're gonna talk a little bit more in depth. So, Just Enough is a company out of San Francisco. Only canned wines. Only buy it on their website. Female owned as far as I know, which is also, the Nomadic is female owned. Just kind of an interesting side fact. This is from the Eola-Amity hills and Willamette Valley. It's also a 2019 Chardonnay, and we tasted it earlier, but we're going to give it a little sniffy sniff again. And this runs about $6.75 a can or roughly $21.75 a bottle. And like we said earlier, I mean, it's a pretty tasty Chardonnay. You know, it's got a good nose, it's got a little bit of Oak, a little bit of tropical, a little bit of minerality, some herb.
- So, next up we have the West + Wilder. This is, they make a few different wines in cans. They make a white, a rose, do they make any reds?
- Make some Pinot.
- Make some bubbles.
- Make some bubbles.
- So, this was a friend of ours made the wine for awhile. And is she still making the wine?
- I believe she still makes the wine, yeah. It's owned by two gentlemen. Nice guys. I actually think of West + Wilder as one of the first people to kind of pioneer higher end wine in can.
- I agree.
- They've been doing a good job with it for quite a few years now.
- These all have had just the slightest hint of reduction to them. But again, I don't find it bad.
- And it's not uncommon because of the basically the inert environment.
- Yeah, and so you would just, if you have a reductive wine, you just give it a little air.
- Give it a little air.
- I like that. I mean, it has, there's some like minerality, it has some fruity components.
- Lot of peach in the mouth.
- Yeah, it's not over the top.
- Yeah, it's good. Actually, the first time I ever had canned wine was probably about four years ago, and it was in Tahoe during the summer, and you couldn't have glass at the beach in Tahoe city. And so we smashed up to the local Save Mart, and bought a six pack of cans, and had a very enjoyable day.
- And that's ultimately why I like cans. It's because you can hike them in, hike them out. You don't carry a bottle with you. I mean, we're canning our first wine in about a month and a half. And I'm really excited just from a personal standpoint, cause I go rock climbing and stuff, and I just wanna be able to shove one in the back of my pocket when I'm walking down. And if I want de-stress at the end of the day I'll have a can in my pocket or my bag. I don't have to worry about..
- And that was the market for cans in the very beginning. Was, that portable, hey, I'm camping, I'm at the river. That's the whole thing. The nice thing about, like, Just Enough, Nomadica, West + Wilder, they're there saying, hey, we got that portability, but now we're also putting a little bit higher quality wine in there and there's a single serving option to it that's really nice. Like, the can is just the vessel for the wine, to a certain extent. And so, it's portable, it's got all those things that we just talked about. You know, you can have it at the beach legally with, you know, cause it's not glass. But it's also got some, you know, you're home on Monday night. That's a perfect glass and a half sort of wine, you don't have to waste anything. Now we've tried white wine. We tried some rose. Let's go into Just Enough's Pinot Noir. Now this is, to me, is newer. The romantic whites, white wines, rosés make a ton of sense for cans. What, you know, is newer is having a little bit higher end red wines in can.
- Right. And so this is a Pinot Noir.
- From Edna Valley.
- Oh, that's got quite the nose on it. That's my favorite so far out of the wines, which normally I've had red wine out of a can before, and it can be a little bit reductive. It can be a little this, can be a little that. This one's phenomenal.
- There's no reduction whatsoever. It's got a lot of like, cranberry, red cherry, fruit right off the bat. There's some really nice texture on this, too. We've talked about, in the past, that we like Lucky Rock, one of our, kind of our hallmarks is we like that silky texture on it. This has a really nice texture.
- Yeah, if you have a recommendation for a red wine we should can, throw it in the comments, because we'd love some feedback for this kind of stuff. Would you like light and fruity? Would you like heavy and mechanic? I would imagine light and fruity, but I'd really be curious to see what you guys think.
- Yeah, so, we won't go too much into same ownership, same labels, all that as the Chardonnay. But I do got to say that that quality, actually pretty impressed and a little surprised.
- So, kind of like we were just saying that light and fruity is a little bit better for cans. This is a heavier version of that. And it's going to be the least expensive option that we're tasting today. So, it works out to be 11 bucks a bottle.
- And it's the O.G. of the canned wines. It's called House Wine. Charles Smith started this brand. Shoot, I don't even know.
- Allow me.
- Thank you sir. 15 years ago or so. It's owned by a company out of Washington state that's larger now. This one's actually from Chile, which is kind of interesting.
- It helps keep the price down.
- Yeah, especially at this price point, you know, that's a half a bottle of wine.
- That's been my issue with.. I'm willing to pay a little bit more for a wine that's quality. I don't necessarily just need wine that is cheap so I can drink it. I want wine that's inexpensive, that's good, so I can drink it. So I do have a little bit.. And then Charles Smith has always done a pretty good job. And so, as long as the wine making's held up with this new ownership, I would imagine it's at least par for the course. The wine is not bad. It's definitely a drop off in quality that we've had to this point. It finishes pretty green which you get with a lot of Chilean..
- Yeah, I'm getting some like leathery, almost green beanie. It's not bad, it's just interesting, maybe out of a can. It doesn't have reduction, which is nice.
- No, it's not stinky at all. It just has a little bit of those, like, under-ripe notes to it. And it's just a little bit more.. You can taste that somebody didn't love this wine as much.
- Yeah, but if you, again, if you wanted to just have this wine to pack in, to take camping, this is a good alternative to the bottle, 'cause I would imagine it's pretty similar to the bottle. The wine quality might not be right up my alley, but if you're more in tune with drinking a $11 bottle of wine, I'd be more than happy to go this route.
- Yeah, and it's not bad wine, it's just not at the caliber of what we've had to this point.
- Just doesn't get me excited right here.
- This was informative. Like, I think that this, today's episode basically allowed me to confirm the trend that canned wine quality is increasing.
- Yeah, I'd say if we had five different bottles of wine in here, we'd probably love to like one and maybe not like one, and it's just kind of the same mix as if bottle, can. It seems like the wine quality is par for the course, can versus bottle.
- So anyways, I'm happy to see this happening. These are an option that is awesome for portability , recyclability, single serving options, just kind of versatile. And one thing that I do like a lot about these too, is it's kind of getting people to pivot their brain a little bit. Inherent in a bottle of wine, people think I gotta, like, age this. Most people don't, but there's still that kind of thought there. And this kind of flips that on its script and says, no, drink these now. Let's keep them fresh, fruity, bright.
- As a matter of fact, you do want to drink them now because the shelf life's about a year for them.
- So, this is, by far, I think we agree that that's pretty darn outstanding for the price. Arguably here, these are all quality. You know, you're not going to have a problem here, I don't think. Here, it's not bad, but you know, if you're a little bit of a wine snob, you might not find that up to your palette.
- Par for the course, we'll end the episode with our favorite wine in glass. And we'll give them a cheers. I learned a lot today. Considering that we're canning wine, I haven't drank a whole lot of canned wine because there's not that many options. So, it's really fun to try them all side by side.
- Yeah, and I think we learned there's not a massive difference between the bottled wine and the canned wine in today's experiment, but there was a slight one. And then as far as the canned wine quality, I think we learned that the canned wine quality is really starting to step up its game.
- Yeah, don't be confused, if this is a $6 can that translates into at $18 bottle of wine. If that's your price point, $6 can right where you want to be.
- Yeah, and then you don't gotta open that bottle just on Monday night and stretch it out for the week. You open a can on Monday, you open a can on Wednesday, you open a can on Friday.
- You would have just enough wine.
- It worked out, it's like you have just enough wine.
- Cheers.
- Cheers.
- Bye bye.
- See ya on the next episode.
