Not long ago, the big debate over wine packaging was about cork vs screw cap. A screw cap was convenient, ideal for a midrange bottle at a picnic, most would say; but can you gift someone a bottle, or consider wine premium, if it lacks a cork?
Boxed wine — long an entry-level market staple in South Africa — has held an interesting and contentious place in the market, increasingly as reputable brands and some new entrants work to shift perceptions of essentially drinking from a bag with a tap.
Yet, amid these options, a more logical contender quietly emerged that ticked multiple boxes: canned wine. And though it’s still the subject of dinner table debate, the idea of bringing a four-pack of wine to a braai is no longer absurd.
Marketing teams say smaller portions are easy to transport, with no need for a corkscrew or even a glass, and that a can keeps its innards fresh and crisp.
But the real gains lie at an industry level. When it comes to preservation and transportation, cans, unlike bottles and bags-in-boxes, let in no light or oxygen and maintain freshness and flavour, particularly in young wines. Canned wine transports more easily than bulky bottles, meaning more volume stacked per container. Given this, and aluminium’s recyclability, it’s also likely to be better for the planet.
The format has taken off abroad. AB InBev kick-started much of it in 2019 when it bought Swish Beverages, known for its Babe Wine and Instagram influencer co-founder Josh Ostrovsky, also known as The Fat Jewish. More recently, US wine behemoth E&J Gallo acquired Bev, a canned wine and spritzer brand, for an undisclosed sum.
South Africa has been slower to embrace the movement. Less than 3% of the country’s wine appears in cans, and a few standalone brands have come and gone. But in the past four years, slimline cans of chenin, sauvignon blanc and even sparkling wines have been popping up more frequently in liquor stores.
Checkers was an early adopter, but the recent launch by Woolworths has trumped this. Woolworths stocks four-packs of premium canned wines from Diemersdal, Kleine Zalze, Haute Cabrière and Ken Forrester.
While it may seem as if this is all new, local canning company Tiny Keg has been chugging away behind the scenes for years, seemingly comfortable in the knowledge that the future is indeed canned.
It started during the now somewhat dampened craft beer revolution, hence the name, travelling to microbreweries with its mobile equipment and putting their beverages in cans.
The model proved successful, but the long-term gains appear to be in wine, not beer.
“When we started in 2019, there was no established wine-in-can industry here,” says Tiny Keg’s Murray Slater. “The only canners were focused on beer or soft drinks. Wineries were sceptical, and there was a perception that canned wine was inferior.”
Fast-forward six years, and the business’s growth is representative of a shift in the local market. It’s no longer a small mobile business but operates primarily from its custom-built carbonation and packaging facility in Brackenfell, Cape Town.
Tiny Keg has now canned beverages for 150 customers and has just surpassed the 20-million can mark. Perhaps more interesting is that despite the early focus on craft beer, 14-million of those “tiny kegs” — more than two-thirds — contained wine. Small fry by someone like Nampak’s numbers, which owns two-thirds of the South African market and had revenue of more than R9bn in 2024, but significant nonetheless.
Though the large canning operators may not yet be interested in the still relatively small wine canning market, operators like Tiny Keg offer wineries keen to experiment with creative names and a convenient new format an ideal outlet.
“We have remained true to our original mission of providing flexible and bespoke solutions,” says Slater. “We fill, seam and decorate all can sizes produced in South Africa. We still operate low minimum order quantities to reduce barriers of entry, and we have upgraded our facility to increase efficiency but still offer the same flexibility.”
As more wine producers and consumers embrace canned wine, it stands to reason that the bigger players will eventually want a slice of the pie. Whether that means increased competition or potential collaborations, canned wine in South Africa is no longer a novelty — and the likelihood of cracking open a tin of the country’s finest chenin without catching a snide remark at the braai is only growing.
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