Kosher Wine in a Can: The Whole Shelf, Sweet to Dry

Canned wine stopped being a novelty a while ago. The kosher shelf now has sparkling moscato, dry rosé, a ready-made gin and tonic, a brunch mimosa and a piña colada, all in slim 250ml cans, all four to a sleeve, and almost all of them between seventeen and twenty-five dollars a pack.

Here is what we carry, what is actually in each one, and which pack to grab for what.

The sweet fizzy ones: Bartenura in a can

Bartenura put the blue bottle on every kiddush table, and the canned range is the same wine in a more useful format. All of these are mevushal and all of them are 250ml: a full glass and a bit per can.

• Bartenura Moscato Cans, 4-pack, $18.99. The original. Muscat from Provincia di Pavia in Lombardy, lightly fizzy, peach and white grape and orange blossom. Kosher for Passover. This is the one that ends the "do we have anything sweet?" question at four o'clock on a Friday.
• Bartenura Peach Moscato Cans, 4-pack, $18.99. Same wine with a ripe peach lift on top. Kosher for Passover.
• Bartenura Lychee Moscato Cans, 4-pack, $16.99. The cheapest of the three and the most distinctive: fresh lychee and white rose over the muscat. Lychee and moscato both run floral and tropical, so it works better than it sounds.
• Bartenura Rosato Sparkling Rosé Cans, 4-pack, $18.99. The pink one. Strawberry and pink grapefruit, off-dry rather than sweet, with enough acidity to keep it from cloying. Kosher for Passover.

If you have never had it, the 750ml blue bottle is the reference point and the cans taste like it. The rest of the range lives in our Bartenura collection, and if you are unsure how sweet "moscato" actually means, we have a whole post on that.

The dry ones

Not everything in a can is sweet, which is the single most common wrong assumption about the category.

J. Folk Rosé Wine Cans, 4 x 250ml, $18.99. Genuinely dry Israeli rosé at 13 percent: strawberry, red cherry, citrus, crisp finish. The pack reads "Hallelu-Yeah," which tells you the intended mood. This is the can to bring where a bottle would be a nuisance: a park, a beach, anywhere glass is a problem. If you want the wider dry-rosé picture, see our guide to kosher rosé.

Canpagne Rose Sparkling, 4-pack, $20.00. A Finger Lakes sparkling rosé: native red and white grapes from cool-climate New York, dry and lively, strawberry and tart apple over a mineral edge. American, dry, and sparkling is a rare combination in a kosher can.

The cocktails

J. Folk Gin & Tonic, 4 x 250ml, $19.99. A real gin and tonic at 10 percent: proper gin, real tonic, juniper and lime zest with a lift of passion fruit. This is the can people search for by name more than any other on this list, and it is the only canned G&T we stock.

Canpagne Peach Mimosa, 4-pack, $20.00. Rosé wine, orange juice and peach juice, pre-mixed. A mimosa without babysitting a bottle of sparkling that will be flat by the time the second round comes round. Shabbos morning, essentially.

Kncoktail Piña Colada, 4-pack, $24.99. Coconut cream, pineapple and rum, no blender. The priciest pack here and the most obviously a dessert.

Tola Italian Wine and Cola, 4-pack, $16.99. The odd one out and the cheapest. Italian white wine mixed with cola: vanilla, cinnamon, citrus, lightly sweet and fizzy. Mevushal. It is a wine spritz that has stopped pretending to be wine, and it is very easy to drink on a hot afternoon.

Why bother with cans at all

Three honest reasons, and one that matters more than the others.

Portion. A 250ml can is a glass and a half. Opening a 750ml bottle to have one glass means either drinking five or throwing four away. This is the real argument, and it is why the cans sell to people who own plenty of bottles.

Where glass is not welcome. Parks, pools, boats, tailgates, a Shabbos afternoon outdoors. Some of these places have rules about glass and all of them have concrete.

Cold, fast. A can chills in fifteen minutes in ice water. A bottle takes the better part of an hour.

Mevushal, and why it comes up

Most of the wine cans here are mevushal: the Bartenura range and the Tola both are. If you are serving at a simcha, a kiddush, or anywhere the pouring is out of your hands, that is usually the deciding detail rather than the flavour. We have a full explanation of what mevushal means if the term is new.

Kosher for Passover is narrower: among the cans, the Bartenura Moscato, Peach Moscato and Rosato carry it. Check the individual page before Pesach rather than assuming the whole shelf comes along.

So which pack?

Sweet, familiar, crowd-safe: Bartenura Moscato. Dry and adult: J. Folk Rosé. Something to hand someone who does not drink wine: the J. Folk Gin & Tonic. Shabbos brunch: Canpagne Peach Mimosa. Cheapest way to try the category: the Tola at $16.99 or the Bartenura Lychee at the same price.

Every one of these ships anywhere in the country, and they travel better than bottles do.