The Two Key Market Niches for Wines Packaged

in Tubes

“We’re not trying to take over 5 percent of the wine bottle business. Tubes services specific market niches, and we’re okay with that,” Kivelstadt said. The first, and perhaps most obvious benefit, is the ability to sample. Retailers, according to Tubes, aren’t as interested in single-serve tubes. Instead, they want multi-tube kits, like five tubes from Sonoma County or six tubes from various Argentinean wineries. Kivelstadt has seen merchants’ desires to offer customers a tasting adventure, rather than a single bottle. It’s the idea of

Protect Your Legacy

•Modernizing

•Protecting

•Passing sampling and exploration that drives consumer behavior right now, and this package serves that need well.

•Expanding?

•Buying?

Sampling kits with varying quantities of tubes have proven popular in Europe. Robert Parker’s company is an important partner of Tubes and has sent out hundreds of sample kits—many with luxury-priced wines—for wine lovers who want to taste before committing big bucks a bottle purchase. [Editor’s note: European postal laws are more lenient than the U.S., enabling this type of shipment.]

The second benefit is the ability for consumers to collect an assortment of tubes at home and pick a single glass of wine. “For example, I really want a white wine, so I pour a tube of white. Okay, I’m having ravioli with red sauce for dinner, I’m going to have a little Italian and have a glass of that with my dinner. I’ve moderated my consumption, but I’ve also had the ability to pick and choose what I want to consume and how I want to consume it,” Kivelstadt

Putting Wines in Tubes

WBM that filling 100ml glass tubes works almost identically to a traditional bottling line, and the entire process takes about 60 days, from first call to delivery of the finished tube. Wine is either brought into the Tubes facility in bulk or in previously filled 750ml bottles. If shipped in bottle, Tubes has a high-speed decanting line that automatically removes the wine from the bottles, transfers to tank, and then into tubes. The tube fill is administered with a state-of-the-art quality control system.

“We silk screen almost all the tubes. That’s because on a small-diameter vessel applying labels is obviously a little bit challenging,” he added. “We do have the ability to label, but our strong preference is silk screen, and we have some really good partners here in the U.S.,” Kivelstadt explained.

The patented tubes are comprised of glass produced by plants in France and Germany. The company is now in talks with domestic glass producers but has not reached the scale needed to bring production to the U.S. (For more details on the tube-filling process see sidebar “The Tube Tests.”)

For Tubes, the biggest costs are the patents, the specialized filling equipment and the custom glass mold. “Having an elegant, sleek tube that’s also hermetically sealed and can withstand the rigors of shipping and handling took time to perfect,” he noted.

No matter the costs, the ultimate mission is to offer a new way to engage customers outside of the tasting room. Kivelstadt believes that this is the future of wine sampling. WBM