Wine in a Tube

I came across an interesting story today about one California vintner claiming the they are selling "the first premium California wine that has broken out of its glass house." The wine, FOUR is a Cabernet/Petit Syrah blend and it's sold in squat, three litre. tube-like canisters. Packaging fine wine in boxes is a bit more common on the other side of the pond (though still pretty taboo), but in America wine not found in a bottle is typically written off as being both cheap and horrible. The distributors of FOUR say that their product is a bird of a different feather and that this new type of packaging is both efficient and more environmentally friendly.

From the article:

"The FOUR tubes -- which can hold the equivalent of four bottles of wine -- are 28.5 centimeters (11 inches) tall (slightly shorter than a standard wine bottle) and 13 cm (5 inches) in diameter.
Everything is recyclable, and the company that makes the bags that hold the wine inside the tubes -- Smurfit Kappa of Epernay, France -- claims a three-liter (three-quart) tube is six times lighter than four 750ml (25.4 fluid ounces) wine bottles.Producing and transporting tubes is less expensive and requires fewer resources than bottles, which allows FOUR to charge about 40 dollars per tube and to reduce its carbon footprint."