Our Choice
Usual Wines
Overview
Usual Wine offers quality and simplicity, which is a welcome change of pace from the rest of the digital wine market. Most of the collection comes in its signature, beaker-shaped bottles, which feature minimal lettering and design — leaving the gorgeous, natural wine to take center stage. In addition to the bottles alone, the selection does have some fun with special options like a mixed pack and a spritz canned wine. This keeps shopping digestible and high quality for visitors of the Usual Wine website.
Price
$40 - $120
Highlight
Usual Wine offers quality and simplicity, which is a welcome change of pace from the rest of the digital wine market. Most of the collection comes in its signature, beaker-shaped bottles, which feature minimal lettering and design — leaving the gorgeous, natural wine to take center stage. In addition to the bottles alone, the selection does have some fun with special options like a mixed pack and a spritz canned wine. This keeps shopping digestible and high quality for visitors of the Usual Wine website.
The delightful and high-quality selection of varieties at Usual Wine features just a large handful of different options, each offering its own special tastes. The Brut Rosé is a gorgeous, bright pink that’s fantastic on warm summer days. Then there’s a Brut and a Rosé sold separate — each offering a more concentrated medley of its own promising flavor profiles. There’s also the red blend, spritz canned wine, and Usual Reserve — an exclusive Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley that’s an utter delight.
Usual Wine has really attractive glass bottles, which are wide at the base, and then gradually grow more narrow until reaching the bottleneck, much like a science beaker. This design is pretty uniform across the whole collection, and that uniformity does add to the sleek aesthetic apparent throughout the brand. The bottles are also smaller, carrying just six-ounces a piece, making drinking them more fun and casual. The only option that deviates from the bottles is the spritz canned wine, which also features a simple, elegant look.
Usual Wines proudly beckons visitors of its website to, “drink real wine.” The pitch for what makes the wine here a higher quality is that it's all produced in small, sustainably farmed batches featuring no additives. Utilizing minimal intervention, including avoiding adding sugars and sulfites, Usual Wines produces a more natural, and thus higher quality wine. The real difference comes when drinking, the smoothness, and lack of bitter additives is quite noticeable.
Pros & Cons
Pros:
The natural farming and winemaking process behind Usual Wines is often associated with more expensive bottles. The blend of high-quality varietals and relatively affordable bottles here is definitely unique and appreciated by customers. Even the most high-end option with the Usual Reserve costs just $120, which is far, far lower than the most expensive option on wine lists of many competitors. Ultimately, this provides a simple selection of delicious wines that are all relatively affordable.
Additives like sugars and sulfates go a long way towards cheapening the quality and flavor of most wines on the American market. The lack of these unhealthy and untasty add-ons in Usual Wines is a major plus. In addition to helping with the drinking experience and nutritional value, the lack of processed nature with the Usual Wines fits right in line with an ever-growing appreciation for more basic and organic approaches to food and beverage. Enjoying what you’re drinking, taking care of your body, and being on trend with contemporary drinkers all add up to make the lack of additives in Usual Wines a fantastic asset.
Additives like sugars and sulfates go a long way towards cheapening the quality and flavor of most wines on the American market. The lack of these unhealthy and untasty add-ons in Usual Wines is a major plus. In addition to helping with the drinking experience and nutritional value, the lack of processed nature with the Usual Wines fits right in line with an ever-growing appreciation for more basic and organic approaches to food and beverage. Enjoying what you’re drinking, taking care of your body, and being on trend with contemporary drinkers all add up to make the lack of additives in Usual Wines a fantastic asset.
Usual Wines features a popular Mixed Pack, which has earned over 2,000 positive reviews. The acclaim comes from the versatility and deliciousness present in this special selection from the Usual Wines menu. An ideal gift and party favor, the Mixed Pack come with boxes of twelve or twenty-four of Usual Wines’ signature six-ounce bottles. The adorable mixture of smaller bottles filled with colorful varietals makes the Mixed Pack a major plus for wine shoppers looking for a unique package online.
Cons:
The Usual Wines selection is far too small. The entire menu of options features all of eight options, and one of those is for a gift card. Another is for the Mixed Pack, but that only consists of the three non-exclusive wines remaining on the list. Someone who is looking for a larger bottle, a wider variety of canned wine options, boxed options, or simply more options of a wider price range and overall higher quality will not be satisfied by shopping with Usual Wine.
There’s an element of pretentiousness throughout the entire Usual Wine website. Sure, sourcing anything from small, sustainably batched farms is wonderful, and a true pro to the collection as a whole, but it doesn’t distinguish itself from all wine that’s been made by other means. The assumption that the approach of Usual Wines is the only way to “drink real wine,” is sure to turn off shoppers, especially those who have historically drank at a bargain.
While Usual Wine is very confident in the realness of its wine, it has completely missed an opportunity to capitalize on its natural approach. There’s no culture available on the website, on the company’s social media accounts, and on the wine bottles themselves. This all builds to a pretty bland, boring brand experience, and it’s proud, simple preparation of the wine prevents it from becoming too exciting either.
The selection at Usual Wine features one type of canned wine — titled Usual Spritz, featuring Brut and real guava juice. It only has eighty-three calories, just under five grams of carbs, and only three grams of natural sugar. It’s one of the most contemporary and attractive products in the collection, yet it’s the only canned wine option. This is a more specific example of this selection’s lacking, and its need for more fun options like the Usual Spritz.
Original House Wine
Overview
Original House Wine is home to a vast selection of high-quality wines available at fair prices and packaged in a number of fun ways. Exploring its colorful labels and tasting the enviable varietals sheds a refreshing, positive light on the potential of boxed and canned wine. The company also does a nice job keeping up with an ever-flowing supply of craft bottled options. At its core — this Washington-based outfit considers the everyday American with its wine, artful containers, and competitive rates. Shopping online for reds, whites, and rosés — Original House Wine features as affordable, eclectic, and as quality a selection as anywhere else, with an attractive aesthetic and culture on top.
Price
$11.99 - $31.99
Highlight
Original House Wine is home to a vast selection of high-quality wines available at fair prices and packaged in a number of fun ways. Exploring its colorful labels and tasting the enviable varietals sheds a refreshing, positive light on the potential of boxed and canned wine. The company also does a nice job keeping up with an ever-flowing supply of craft bottled options. At its core — this Washington-based outfit considers the everyday American with its wine, artful containers, and competitive rates. Shopping online for reds, whites, and rosés — Original House Wine features as affordable, eclectic, and as quality a selection as anywhere else, with an attractive aesthetic and culture on top.
Inspired by respected table wines in Europe, the selection at House Wine represents a worldly variety of styles and flavors. Well priced and of fine quality, the wines are constantly updated with new themes and flavors. Look to the canned section for innovative takes like Grapefruit Spritz, and the new Cranberry Cosmo Wine. The bottled section takes on common delicious themes with straightforward classics. Among the most delicious are the Steakhouse Cabernet Sauvignon, and the Fish House Sauvignon Blanc.
Every bottle, box, and canned wine available at House Wine features its own take on the brand’s delightful, relatable aesthetic. The wine labels feature large lettering, and simple designs of things like houses, evoking an air of coziness which makes a purchase all the more appealing. The boxes carry the same theme, but stand out with striking all-white, and all-black backgrounds. The cans might be the most fun, some like the Casa Rita featuring more intricate and colorful backdrops. Together, the whole selection strings together an appealing palette of looks.
The Original House Wine website features a number of appealing anecdotes, including a little background on the founding and working winemakers behind the brand’s selection. The founder is an ex music manager named Charles Smith who set out to create an affordable line of varietals inspired by everyday European table wines. Then there’s Hal Landvoigt who travels the world sampling and sourcing the finest grapes he can find. The passion and action on the part of these two award-winning winemakers provides an attractive narrative to complement their products.
Pros & Cons
Pros:
While there aren’t a million different styles of wine available on Original House Wine, the options that are there do cover a nice range of flavors, and maintain admirable quality for the prices. Each of the twelve-dollar bottles, for example, maintains smoothness and complexity in flavor, while also being simple enough to be tasty for all sorts of winemakers. The House Wine Brut Bubbles pop with flavor and refreshing, fizzy carbonation.
House Wines are built to serve a variety of situations. Cans can be taken on the go for family days by the pool, and backyard barbecues. The bottles are great to take to dinner parties and keep around the house without breaking the bank. The boxes work wonderful for camping trips, and friends nights where a bottle isn’t quite enough. The versatility of the combined catalog is a major pro.
House Wine performs well around the world. Throughout its time, it’s received numerous accolades, awards, and special write ups from esteemed publications like Cosmopolitan Magazine, Grub Street, and USA Today. Its popularity is attractive in the sense that you can rely on receiving a lot of love for stocking up on various House Wine boxes, bottles, and cans for a party with friends, or family get together.
While much of this review has looked to the value of the entire catalogue at Original House Wine, a standout area of the selection is the fun and inventive canned wine. The casual, eclectic flavor options really change the game on drinking wine. It adds a sociability and casualness that just doesn’t fit with pouring a bottle into a stemmed glass. Each of the canned wines here are delicious, which offers an honest defense against some winemakers' disdain for any packaging that’s not a bottle.
Cons:
There’s definitely a limited variety at Original House Wine. The bottle section only features a couple price points, and there’s certainly room for growth across the boxed and canned sections as well. While the inventory’s lack of an overwhelming number of options does make it easy to navigate, it also makes it easy to grow bored for the frequent consumer.
There are nice write-ups on the website for each product that feature a description of the flavors, and the specific kind of drink the shopper is looking at. There are nice elements to the page, like a section that suggests nice foods to pair with the wine, and a graphic showing how much say a box, or a can contains. The only downside to these product pages is that the wines leave much more room for discussion. Wine fanatics love talking wine, and a simple paragraph, list, and graphic can be underwhelming for curious shoppers.
While Original House Wine does maintain a respectable quality across its entire selection, the flavors of a wine list priced this low do have limits. There are times when simplicity can leave the imagination yearning for more complex varietals that can be found from more upscale and craft-focused distributors. There’s definitely a value-wine limit on the taste and flavor of the wines here.
There aren’t any older wines available here. Of course, the winery is only so old, and therefore can only serve original options of a certain age. But other distributors do source older craft bottles from around the world, and it would make shopping here a more enjoyable and potentially fruitful experience with such selections available.
Drink Babe
Overview
Babe canned wines come in three flavors of sparkling wine, Babe Grigio, Babe Rose, and Babe Red. You can buy each individual flavor or a variety pack of all three. They also offer two bottles, the Family Time Is Hard pinot grigio, and Winter Is The Worst red wine. There are also Grigio and Red Bundles that include a bottle, a large pack of canned wine, and a baseball cap embroidered with "Babe."
Price
$27.99 - $83.94
Highlight
Babe canned wines come in three flavors of sparkling wine, Babe Grigio, Babe Rose, and Babe Red. You can buy each individual flavor or a variety pack of all three. They also offer two bottles, the Family Time Is Hard pinot grigio, and Winter Is The Worst red wine. There are also Grigio and Red Bundles that include a bottle, a large pack of canned wine, and a baseball cap embroidered with "Babe."
The company's website offers the chance for fans to become Babe ambassadors and show off the brand on Instagram. They claim to be looking for the "cutest people on the literal internet" to connect with the brand. In 2019, model Emily Ratajkowski became the official Chief of Taste for the brand.
Babe is a celebrity-owned and operated brand. It was started by Josh Ostrovsky, known by his comedy name, "The Fat Jew," and founders of "White Girl Problems" Tanner and David Oliver Cohen. The brand grew online, and many social media influencers are Babe ambassadors. Babe frequently features celebrities on their Instagram, including Dorinda medley of The Real Housewives franchise and Tyler Cameron of Bachelor fame.
Babe is a popular brand. They are a well known canned wine brand that is sold in many stores throughout the country. Babe's Red wine won the award for best bubbly wine in the world from the World Sparkling Wine Awards earlier this year. They've also gotten a lot of publicity from their celebrity creators and ambassadors. Babe employs a lot of reality television stars as ambassadors of their brand, including many Bachelor and Bachelorette contestants.
Pros & Cons
Pros:
Babe wines are very popular. They are one of the most well known and award-winning canned wine brands and are sold in easily accessible stores like grocery stores. Their spread featuring Emily Ratajkowski was featured in People Magazine. Babe has much more brand recognition than most canned wines currently on the market. Their use of celebrities and influencers to promote their product was a smart move and contributed to their success as a brand. Using social media and the internet to rebrand wine was a genius move on their part.
Babe's website shows that the brand is all about having fun. Their clever copy and fun graphics give the customer the impression that they are buying a cool product. Their marketing is spot on for their target demographic. The name is also more recognizable and marketable than competitors. Their Instagram page is full of wine-related memes and relatable gifs that make the brand accessible to people in their 20's and 30's. The brand's Instagram bio literally read, "because wine needed a rebrand," and they took full advantage of this concept. Babe upgraded wine from a "mom drink" to something easily drinkable for younger people and a much cooler sounding drink.
Babe's cans of wine contain more wine and higher alcohol content for a better price than other canned wine brands. At 12% ABV, they match most bottled wines and have a higher alcohol content than beer or spiked seltzer. Each can of Babe contains two servings of wine.
Babe wines were one of the first brands to make canned wines. Canned wine is easy to transport and convenient to drink, unlike traditional glass bottles that require a bottle opener and glasses. The individual servings and easily transported cans made Babe a hugely successful company.
Cons:
Babe wines are only sold in stores in the United States, the UK and Canada. They can only ship to 34 out of 50 states because of California laws and do not ship internationally.
There aren't a lot of flavor choices of Babe wines. The three choices are Pinot Grigio, Red, and Rose, which are all sparkling wines.
Babe wines are not kosher or gluten-free certified. While they don't contain gluten products, the plant where they are made is not gluten-free certified. Babe Grigio and Rose are also not vegan, but Babe Red is.
Babe contains more sugar and calories than some other canned wine brands. Their nutrition facts are not as poor as some bottled wines, but they do have more calories than most light beers and spiked seltzers, which would be their main competitors.
Drink Bev
Overview
Drink Bev canned wine is a female-led brand. They take pride in having a female wine maker and female CEO and founder. The brand developed from a collective of female creatives called Made By Chicks. Brink Bev emphasizes that while it's made by chicks, it's made for everyone. Their mission statement is "Do it different, do it better. Break the glass," referring not only to canned wine, but breaking the glass ceiling.
Price
$49 - $190
Highlight
Drink Bev canned wine is a female-led brand. They take pride in having a female wine maker and female CEO and founder. The brand developed from a collective of female creatives called Made By Chicks. Brink Bev emphasizes that while it's made by chicks, it's made for everyone. Their mission statement is "Do it different, do it better. Break the glass," referring not only to canned wine, but breaking the glass ceiling.
The brand is not only led by women, but seeks to change dangerous parts of drinking culture. The cans offer a smaller amount of wine to keep drinking more under control. The creator of the brand writes in the Our Story tab on the website that she experienced some medical issues that were exacerbated by drinking, which led her to want to change drinking culture. Drink Bev is specifically focused on changing college drinking culture. Infographics on their Instagram page emphasize responsible drinking, and highlight that drinking should not be competitive or make you feel cooler.
Bev wines all have zero grams of sugar and range between 100 and 127 calories per can. This is quite low for wine, which typically contains a lot of sugar, which can contribute to bad headaches and rough hangovers. The low sugar and calorie count reflects Bev? mission to make drinking less unhealthy.
The colorful and fun website gives the product a great feel. The products will appeal to younger women and draw people in with the cute images and infographics. The website also features a minute-long "visual experience;" a colorful, graphic design heavy commercial with pop music aimed to introduce new customers to their flavors.
Pros & Cons
Pros:
Sugar free wine is very hard to find, and customer reviews show that the taste of the wines is not compromised. The low calorie approach to the wines will appeal to the target audience. There are no additives in Bev wines, they are all made of 100% juice.
Each can of Bev wine holds about one and a half glasses of wine, a significant amount for the price. All the wines are approximately 11% ABV, also a good alcohol content for the price.
Besides having no added sugars or artificial flavorings, Bev wine is also gluten-free. This is an edge over competitor Babe wines, which do not have a certified gluten-free production facility. It also adds to Bev wines' policy of making their wines as customer-friendly and nutritious as possible.
Bev wines clearly cares about their customers. Not only are their wines not as bad for you as other brands, they have a clear mission and want to make drinking healthier and safer. Any money that a customer spends on bev wines is going to a good company with morals. They also make it clear that hiring women is very important to them. Since their target audience is young women, this will undoubtedly appeal to that demographic. Their customer service practices also show that they strive to satisfy customers and keep them coming back.
Cons:
Bev wines are only sold in the United States, and only in certain areas within the US. The wines are only sold in Southern California, Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Tennessee and Rhode Island. While they do ship across the United States, Bev wines do not ship internationally.
There aren't many choices for flavors of Bev wine. The five flavors currently available are Pinot Grigio, Sauvingon Blanc, Rose, Pinot Noir, and Glitz, a sparkling white wine. Their Pinot Noir was very recently added and is only available for purchase through their Instagram page, not on their main website.
Bev wines are certainly more expensive than what you might find at a grocery store. A twelve-pack of beer is much less expensive than an eight pack of Bev wine, but the wines offer higher alcohol content. Spiked seltzers would also be a significant competitor to Bev wines since they are mainly marketed towards women looking for a lower calorie and tastier option than beer. Seltzers are also significantly less expensive than Bev wines and much more widely sold.
Bev wines is a largely unknown brand. While customer reviews on their site are glowing, there aren't a lot of them. Taking a chance on an emerging brand could be a con for some consumers.