There’s something coquettish about a box of Nomadica wine sitting on the edge of a counter. In order to activate it and retrieve the liquid inside, one must approach it, push its spout, and watch it fill up the glass below. It’s an act most drinkers are not used to. While change can be uncomfortable, Nomadica embraces it.
The days of “slapping the bag” no longer require being synonymous with boxed wine. Known to be associated with college raucous, boxed wine is increasingly more visible on store shelves and has the power to welcome a new generation of wine drinkers thanks to a refreshed approach to how it’s made and consumed.
Kristen Olszewski, founder of Nomadica wines, is a packaging pioneer. Olszewski launched Nomadica in 2017 with a line of premium canned wines, considered somewhat obscure just a number of years ago. The brand now darts further into murky territory by packaging the wine in a box that showcases abstract art, changing the perception that good wine can only be poured from a glass bottle, thus shifting consumer habits. “I just want to bring some romance back into everyday life,” she tells me.
A Smaller Carbon Footprint
Olszewski’s path to Nomadica is far from straight-forward. The Western Massachusetts native earned a degree in sustainable agriculture to then attend Harvard Medical School, only to drop out halfway through, beginning another notoriously difficult study: sommelier training. She would soon take the Court of Master Sommelier training course, ultimately working at several Michelin-starred restaurants including LA’s Osteria Mozza. “It’s always just felt like a language I speak,” she says.
While working in fine dining, she came to realize most of the carbon footprint in a bottle of wine comes from the glass bottle itself. According to the Glass Packaging Institute, only about 31% of all glass from food and beverage packaging was recycled in 2018 despite its ability to be recycled endlessly. “It’s so energy intensive to grind down glass and make more,” Olszewski explains. “It’s also really heavy so the shipping emissions are crazy.” Olszewski vows never to package Nomadica in glass. Nomadica cans are about a 70% reduction in carbon footprint and its boxed wines are a nearly 90% reduction.
As Nomadica, which sources all of its grapes from California, launched into retail, Whole Foods Market took a chance on the experimental cans featuring abstract art, which almost acts as a tasting note for the wine inside. At the time, Whole Foods, which is a founding member of the Sustainable Wine Roundtable, was exploring the world of sustainable packaging. “The first accord that came out of the Roundtable was the Bottle Weight Accord,” says Rick Eplawy, Executive Leader of Merchandising for beer, wine and spirits at Whole Foods Market. “We all aligned on an ideal weight of a bottle, which should be 420 grams or less.” Whole Foods has committed to carrying only distinctive label (exclusive) wines that meet this standard by the end of 2025.
“The first thing that generally draws us to a supplier is that it’s sourced from vineyards that use sustainable farming practices and it’s made by winemakers who engage in low-intervention winemaking,” Eplawy explains. “Nomadica is rapidly gaining ground and they definitely are going to be huge.”
The Case For A Box
One of Olszewski’s mentors, a sommelier in his 50’s, once blindly gave her a glass of wine to try. She loved it, but was curious as to why he was being so sly. “It came from a box,” he told her. Given Nomadica’s leadership in the alternative packaging space, a box feels like a natural next step for the brand, doubling down on the commitment, releasing its red, white, rosé and orange blends in a sleek box that are an extension of the cans, featuring the same artwork that makes it stand out on a shelf, a party, restaurant or a home.
The boxed wines are the same blends that are in the cans. But Olszewski actually prefers the taste of Nomadica out of the box more than the can. “[In the box, the wine] is so perfectly preserved,” she says. As the wine pulls through the spout, the wine opens up and slightly oxidizes. “It’s slowly getting some airflow over time…It’s luxurious.”
Wine drinkers often feel pressured to finish a bottle once it’s uncorked. With boxed wine, that pressure vanishes. The bag that holds and seals the wine inside the box allows it to stay fresh for up to six weeks in the fridge. Each box contains 3 liters, about the same as four bottles of wine.
Putting Nomadica in a box makes premium wine more accessible to younger consumers, who are moving away from traditional means of drinking. A recent IWSR report details that U.S. wine consumption is experiencing a sharp decline from its peak in 2017. It reveals that 67% of Gen Z and 61% of Millennials are moderating their overall alcohol consumption.
Nomadica simply labels its wines “red,” and “white,” and so on, as opposed to its specific variety like Pinot Noir or Chardonnay. This makes the wine more accessible to that younger demo, a primary goal of Olszewski’s career. “The biggest barrier…they think they have to be a genius in order to drink it.” That doesn’t mean they’re not curious, though, leading to the decision to include a QR code on Nomadica’s packaging. This leads to the wine’s identification information, the cépages, along with its origin and vintage.
A Push Towards Alternative Packaging
Retailers of all sizes are also pushing hard for alternative packaging in the products they carry. In addition to natural grocers like Whole Foods and LA’s Bristol Farms, Nomadica is stocked in conventional grocers like Ralphs and H-E-B, specialty BevAlc retailers like Total Wines and More (where it just expanded nationally), and big box stores like Target, which has just agreed to carry Nomadica in major regions including California, Florida and Texas starting next year.
Nomadica is not the only wine vesseled in alternative packaging, although it is arguably the most premium boxed wine on the market. Other brands experimenting with alternative packaging include Medley, packaged in a large pouch, and Juliet, packaged in a cylindrical box with a rope strap. Black Box and Bota Box are the top-selling boxed wine brands at Whole Foods but are considered less premium wines than Nomadica. Nomadica’s cans are performing better than its boxes in Whole Foods right now. “The boxes have grown about 70%, the cans have grown about 200% in the orange year over year. And then the sparkling rosé has grown almost 450% year over year,” Eplawy says.
A box of Nomadica wine costs about $50. Black Box costs less than half. “We have always been challenged with the idea of getting the customer to see past the price and really understand what the value is that they’re getting for the money,” Eplawy says. “There is still work to be done.”
Nomadica is helping this effort move forward by entering the boxed wine space. The brand is a founding member of the Alternative Packaging Alliance, which works to change the perception that alternative packaging equates inferior quality. Another one of its founding members, Allison Luvera, who is also the cofounder of Juliet, says, “with an established reputation as a high-quality wine producer, Nomadica’s expansion into boxed wine sends a message that the format can be premium.”
A glass of wine that adds pleasure to someone’s life is not exclusive to any one type of vessel. Nomadica understood this even before the consumer demanded it and created the market for it.
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