CUTCHOGUE, NY – January 25, 2018 – Lieb Cellars, a leading NY winery located on the North Fork of Long Island, announced today the roll out of 5 canned wines under their Bridge Lane label. Lieb successfully completed a test batch of their rosé in can last summer and have spent the past 5 months making tweaks to the packaging, lab testing the cans and developing four new varieties. The full line consists of a white merlot, unoaked chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, dry rosé and red blend.
Known for breaking tradition and embracing “alternative” wine packaging, putting wine in can was a natural next step for the innovative wine company which was the first NY winery to launch 3L premium box wine and 20L disposable keg wine in 2014.
“Our Lieb Cellars reserve line is our anchor and will always be about crafting the best possible, elegant, age-worthy wines from our estate vineyards,” says Lieb Cellars’ General Manager, Ami Opisso. “Our second label, Bridge Lane, is about making fresh, fruit-forward wines and saying – how can we have some fun and offer value? As young, casual consumers ourselves, what and how do we want to drink wine?”
Last year Lieb’s team was psyched to try out their test batch rosé cans. “We live near the beach and a bunch of us have or know people who have boats. It was awesome to be able to throw our cans in a cooler next to Greenport Harbor Summer Ales and not have to worry about glass bottles or even cups,” states Opisso.
And customer response to the cans was overwhelming. The 1,100 test batch cans were sold out in two weeks. “There were people waiting at the tasting room the morning they went on sale, and then they kept coming. I had to hide some in my office for fear they’d be gone before I remembered to grab my samples,” remarks Opisso.
The wines are made from sustainably farmed grapes grown at Lieb Cellars estate vineyard and sourced from other local, top notch vineyard sites. They’re packaged in recyclable 375ml aluminum cans (which equates to half of a standard 750ML bottle of wine or 2 large glass pours) and will be sold, starting tomorrow, in their Bridge Lane Wine Tasting Room for $9.00 per can or $34.00 for the 4-pack.
They’ll also be for sale on Bridge Lane’s website (www.bridgelanewine.com) and at select retail stores and casual restaurants on the East Coast.
“We’ve been working on these cans for about a year and a half now,” Opisso concludes. “It’s pretty cool to finally get to share them with everybody.”
