Yes, it is possible, what is more, it exists! Castelo Pedregosa has a whole range of canned wine products, and MI Pét-Nat is one of them. Handy, tasty and sustainable.
I am a great supporter of canned products. I think my “conversion” took place at Bulk Wine Conference in 2019 in Amsterdam, when I participated in a canned wine masterclass. It was very-very convincing. Did you know that can is 100% recyclable? And since it is featherlight, the carbon footprint coming from shipment of canned products is considerably lower than that of the bottled products – not to mention the extra heavy wine bottles.
Some more arguments for canned products
I often joke that I am a “colleague of Bruce Willis”. It is because there is a Hungarian energy drink called Hell, Bruce is the “face” of the brand and I also worked for Hell for a single project. It was after my Amsterdam conference experiences were published. The brand manager, who happens to live in New Zealand read my article praising the merits of canned products, and he gave me the job of a new, fruit and honey based soft drink. I think, the product has never been released (it was during Covid time), but I enjoyed the job, because I strongly believe in the importance of alternative packaging.
Plus, apart from the sustainable approach, canned products have other benefits:
– They do not take apart the market share from bottled wines, on the contrary, they can widen it with alternative places of consumptions like sport events, beach, music concerts.
– It is easy to open and small portion is useful for those who wish to have only a glass and do not want to open a whole bottle.
– I was shown convincing results from experiments proving that wines for young consumption do not taste differently from can than from bottle. Certainly, cans are not suggested for ageing…
– It might be cheaper to brand cans than bottles.
Pedregosa MI Pét-Nat
I have lived in Sant Sadurní d’Anoia (near Barcelona) for 6 years, I have visited Agusti Torello Mata cava house several times, however, I never “crossed the road” to visit Pedregosa. One day I saw a nice photo of the winery on Instagram (yes, the influencer is influenced as well:), and a few days later I walked up the winery. One of the first thing I saw was a charging station for electric cars – good point! The other thing that made me more than satisfied was the bar, a large place with a terrace open every day, offering tapas and Pedregosa cavas and wines by the glass. The view is gorgeous, the staff is kind, what else? Well, apart from the well made cavas they offer canned products, and to my surprise a pét-nat as well.
For those who do not know: pét-nat is an ancient method of bubbles. The wine is bottled while it is still fermenting, so the end of the fermentation takes place in the bottle. When I told a friend of mine about Pedregosa MI Pét-Nat, he could not believe. He said the can is not strong enough to withstand the pressure. Well, I was not the most diligent student at physics lessons, so I asked the winery. Tània Vendrell of Castello Pedregosa explained: “We follow the ancestral method to make it. Just like in the bottle, the partially fermented must is canned and finishing the fermentation inside the can. We can it when it still has 12g/l of sugar. Cans withstand up to 7 bars of pressure and Pet-Nat is between 2,5 and 3 bars so they don’t explode.”
So here is the explanation. The wine itself is made of the indigenous Xarel·lo grape blended with the also indigenous Malvasia de Sitges. Clear, citrusy, refreshing, juicy, lovely – I cannot complain, my walk down the hill (around 3 kilometres) was really tasty!
Pedregosa MI Pét-Nat on their webshop
La Carmeta, the wine bar of Pedregosa
