“A Golden Age of Innovation” – an excerpt from The Buyer

What a difference the recent weeks have made to optimism in the UK. Whatever your politics, the new Labour government has kicked off their term with confident and bold decision-making. It feels like things are finally getting done, and to a tune of making things better, rather than demonising migrants or pandering to extremism. Much better to be shunning north sea oil in favour of solar power, or actually engaging with our NHS to try and proactively resolve years of pain.

Maybe it is premature to celebrate – this is politics after all, and the honeymoon period of new government will end at some point. Let’s just hope that when the popular applaud dies down, the government keeps focused on the push for better. But that is certainly something we can relish and learn from in the wine business and start to implement more: bold, visionary decision-making.

The wine trade anecdotally moves slowly. If you spend any time in alternative formats – or ‘future formats’ as we like to call them at Canned Wine Co. – it won’t be long before someone will tell you the wine trade has ‘only just gotten used to screwcaps’.

While that transition might have felt slow and, to those outside of wine beguilingly insignificant, we are currently living in a golden age of innovation in wine.

Packaging is having a whirl at the moment, with the quality showing up in bags, cans, pouches and kegs higher than ever before and with producers agreeing to lighter and lighter weight glass bottles. Not only does this mean our packaging grows more sustainable, but today the consumer has a plethora of choice for all occasions, whether you want a glass of wine kept fresh straight out of a can in a cinema, a bottle of something special in your local restaurant, or you’ve ordered a box of your favourite in for the family and friends BBQ.

Innovation through the supply chain

But the innovation goes well beyond packaging. I’ve seen through our own supply chain and through a decade of buying wines and creating spirits that those producing drinks are problem-solving at a rate akin to other fast moving consumer goods. The times we’re in are fraught in some ways, but they’re also at their most exciting.

In the vineyard, grafting and canopy management, soil regeneration and mechanisation, and data-driven understanding of the lands you look after and the vines you plant have led to differing schools of thought and an explosion in experimentation. The dangers of climate change and the risk to yields has forced decisions to be made that might have taken decades before, while new generations with a love for nature and a passion for sustainability have driven change further.

What’s more, in a culture where people drink less mass-produced quantity is less and less appealing. Quality starts to become more important. Quality demands bold moves. Quality, whether you like the style or not, gave birth to natural wines. Some talked about health and additives, but most talked about being truthful to the place, the variety and the vintage.

Like all great innovation, some examples were lazy, some were still learning, others were good, and some were genius. For the consumer? It meant more choice, more to explore. That’s never a bad thing.

Read the rest of the article here: https://www.the-buyer.net/opinion/canned-wine-co-s-ben-franks-on-why-we-are-in-a-golden-age-of-wine-innovation

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