Wine break: Reviewing Mancan canned wines

Received: Mancan canned wines

Here’s an option for pandemic drinking if you’re looking for beer alternatives: Mancan Wines, which come in cans. The company had sent me all four of its wines, in its smaller 250ml can format (approximately 8.5 fluid ounces), which my wife and I split and reviewed during a watching of, appropriately enough, 12 Monkeys. Between the two of us, all four cans yielded about two and a half six-ounce glasses of wine each, which made for a nice session to sample side by side.

Incidentally, Mancan also offers 12-ounce cans (355ml) as its main line. This stems back to the company’s origin story of how the founders didn’t want wine from a half-empty bottle sitting behind a bar for days, but a “beer can full of wine” from which “a mancan” was quipped. I don’t know that 12-ounce cans are more “man” friendly because it seems like such a convenient package for two to split. At any rate, Mancan was founded in 2015 and claims to have been the first exclusive canned wine company in the U.S.

This 250ml format is dubbed the “Brother Brand” and is labeled as Graham & Fisk’s Wine-in-a-Can.

The four wine the company offers are White Wine, White Wine with Bubbles, Rosé Wine with Bubbles, and Red Wine. They are all blends of California wines; I’ll note the blended constituents below.

I enjoy wine, and I’ll approach it from a sensory perspective similar to how I approach beer, though I don’t review them the same way. In this case, I wrote down my impressions as I drank each wine, which I’ll present here, but don’t expect Robert Parker-esque reviews!

White Wine

Mancan White Wine

Blend of unoaked Chardonnay and Viognier.

My notes: Notes of peaches, white fruit, honeydew melon in the aroma, a nicely standard “white” wine while tending towards sweeter (simple syrup). Light, crisp, fruity with a gentle tart finish. Refreshing and what you’d be looking for in a casual white table wine.

White Wine with Bubbles

Mancan White Wine with Bubbles

Blend of unoaked Chardonnay and Viognier with bubbles. Also listed as “Mancan Fizz” on the website.

My notes: Dry and fruity with white grape juice and floral aromas. Flavor is dry with just a hint of hay and barnyard rusticity. Table grapes. Crisp with a touch of citrus. Refreshing.

Rosé Wine with Bubbles

Mancan Rosé Wine with Bubbles

Blend of Zinfandel and unoaked Chardonnay.

My notes: Pink/rose color. Fruitier that the White Bubbles, with more berry and pomegranate aromas. Sweeter too, in flavor, with sweet fruits, melon. Floral, crisp, some grape skin is present, some berry juice. Tasty.

Red Wine

Mancan Red Wine

Blend of Merlot and Zinfandel.

My notes: Deep rich aromas, jammy, with blackberries and a hint of tobacco spiciness. Rich flavor as well, leathery and deeply fruity with dark ripe berry and a nice alcohol spiciness leading to a pleasant bloom of heat. Quite good for a table red wine blend.

Overall: We both enjoyed these wines quite a bit more than the initial skepticism of wine in a can would have allowed. The can format did nothing that we could tell to detract from the aromas and flavors of these wines, though perhaps the fizzy/bubbly wines could have had more carbonation. But generally we were quite pleased with how these turned out.

If you’re looking for a canned wine format for casual drinking—say to take outdoors camping, hiking, a day at the lake—these should certainly be on your list to check out.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.