Resveratrol Key in New Canned Wine

It’s not always about what’s inside. Beverage packaging is transcending the typical bottles or cans of yesterday—or, at least, improving them.

Potentially one of the most unique patents on the market is fresh out of Australia. Barokes Wines’ recently published patent calls on resveratrol, not for its heart-health benefits, but as a can coating.

Here’s Barokes’ logic. In the centuries wine has been around, it’s been stored in everything from pottery to animal skins. These days, glass is the go-to, but not without issues. “The use of glass bottles has evolved more recently as the preferred storage method, however glass has a number of drawbacks as a packaging medium for beverages, including its weight, durability and less than optimum recycling ability," Barokes’ patent noted. The increased consumer (and therefore manufacturer) demand on minimizing the carbon footprint adds even more pressure.

“As the world market demand for wine increases, there is a need to transport wine that maintains its integrity and safety globally with the additional use of a more environmentally sustainable beverage packaging," the patent read.

Cans may offer that, but there’s a big problem: the perceived tinny taste. Manufacturers typically apply a lacquer inside the can to prevent what they call “can taint." However, wine’s quality has a pretty short shelf life with these traditional methods.

Barokes Wines solution is to coat the can’s interior with resveratrol—a polyphenol found in grapes. According to the inventors, the resveratrol coating protected the wine from degradation and decomposition; the product had a shelf life of at least 12 months (and provides a more sustainable option, no less)! Pretty impressive.

Cans aren’t the only packaging manufacturers are looking toward to save cash.

Amerigo Laboratories’ New Shaker—a dual-chamber bottle that holds dry ingredients separately from liquid—just launched in North America, despite almost two decades’ of use in Europe. The single-dose system keeps the dry ingredient in a plug under the cap, which the consumer can press to plunge in the liquid. According to Ralph Maser, Amerigo’s CEO, the company expects to sell 225 million units in Europe this year.

"Traction is growing due to companies wanting to differentiate their product lines from anything in their industry," Maser said in a release.