8 best canned wines to pack in your picnic basket

Sign up to our free weekly newsletter for insider tips and product reviews from our shopping experts

Sign up for our free IndyBest email

Sign up for our free IndyBest email

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

For a long time, canned wine has been seen as something to scoff at. Convenient, sure, but more often than not a saccharine swill of undisclosed origin, only ever to be drunk in moments of desperation, like festivals or from dodgy airport kiosks.

Fast-forward two years and – thanks to the work of genre-defying winemakers – canned wine has moved from fad to a bona fide beverage category. The UK’s canned wine market is now worth more than £3.6m, having increased more than 125 per cent in the year to August 2019.

Read more: 10 best wine coolers for keeping your drinks perfectly chilled

Testament to their millennial-minded branding, market leaders like Babe and Hun are reaching an entirely different demographic from traditional winemakers. And, for consumers to whom the old-school wine world seems exclusive and stuffy, cans are a more accessible way to discover what you like – and what you don’t.

The pros of canned wine are clear: portability is a huge draw, plus, with a summer spent picnicking in the park on the horizon, cans offer a safer alternative to glass, which is often prohibited in public spaces.

The environmental benefits of cans over their bottled competitors should be considered, too. Not only are cans almost infinitely recyclable but they also weigh less to transport, which cuts down on carbon emissions and reduces their overall carbon footprint.

Single-serve cans can also help to combat wine wastage. According to wine seller Laithwaites, the average British household throws away around two glasses of wine a week on average – the yearly equivalent of 17.3 bottles per household or 624 million bottles nationally (which is enough to fill 333 Olympic-size swimming pools – heaven forbid).

A 25cl can is ideal on evenings you fancy a glass, but can’t justify opening a whole bottle. And when wine aisles are becoming increasingly intimidating places to navigate, a £4 can presents less of a financial risk than a £14 bottle, which you then find isn’t to your taste.

While the canning process presents many difficulties for winemakers across the globe, it is also argued that young wines can be kept fresher by preventing unwanted oxidation. Plus you’ll never have to worry about it getting corked or overexposed to sunlight. Win, win.

Convinced to crack a can? Here are our favourite tipples to sip this season.

You can trust our independent reviews. We may earn commission from some of the retailers, but we never allow this to influence selections, which are formed from real-world testing and expert advice. This revenue helps us to fund journalism across The Independent.