Trade & Media

Enjoying wine in a park or at the beach no longer means pouring a bottle into a Thermos or hiding in shame behind your cheap box of Franzia wine.

There are now several high-quality options in sleek, easy-to-grab containers that will make you feel like the coolest person at the picnic.

“Portable wines are definitely coming into their own,” says Alexis Korman, a contributing travel editor for Wine Enthusiast. “It’s losing the perception that it’s just crap wine.”

Wine in cans? It just doesn’t track. You hear that unmistakable pop of a beer can opening — only it’s wine inside, not beer. And it’s not cheap plonk either, but some serious juice.

Though Australia’s Barokes Wines was probably the first to try the idea, way back in 1996, the idea is just catching on here. And no outrage from Paul Hobbs, one of the world’s most lauded winemakers, when asked about it.

Don’t worry, old-fashioned wine bottles aren’t going anywhere, but as summer winds down, these convenient, impossible to break, superportable cans are perfect to tote to a picnic, lazy beach day or friend’s barbecue.

Putting wine in a can makes it lightweight, unbreakable, and crushable (nice when backpacking out your empties). None of that matters, of course, if it tastes like, well, what you might expect wine in a can to taste like.