Cordier wine to be sold with a straw

"We need to change the image of wine in our country," says Pierre Leclerc, director of the Economic Committee for France's South East Wines, "We have ignored young people and now we are paying the price."

That good wine can taste right drunk through a straw is the belief of French wine merchant Cordier. The wine, called Tandem, comes in red, white and rose and is aimed at the smaller consumables segment, which grew by 12% in France last year. The straw that comes with the pack has four holes around a sealed top that send individual streams of wine onto the tongue, apparently recreating the sensation of drinking from a glass.

Cordier's Tandem wine is packaged in a recyclable Tetra Pak, along with a special four-holed straw that floods the mouth with individual streams of alcohol. The company is reporting sales of 1,000 units a week in Belgian test markets, where it's being sold in sandwich aisles as an on-the-run alternative to bottled water and pop, for €1.89. There are plans for a French launch early next year, as well as Canada, according to Cordier's marketing director Vincent Bonhur. Cordier, whose top-end wines can sell for about €3,000 a bottle, is the first high-end wine producer from Bordeaux to put wine in a box.

Promoting the product in France may be difficult. A law in France bans alcohol ads on television and requires billboard ads for alcohol to include health warnings. Wine makers are trying to persuade the French government to give wine a special legal statute to avoid the strict advertising measures.

"There are limits to fantasy and marketing," says Philippe Faure-Brac, a former world champion sommelier. "To innovate is good, to respect is better." Despite the skepticism, the shift towards more exotic packaging and marketing has supporters even among the most celebrated of France's high-end wine makers. "Normally I am a traditionalist," says Michel Raymond, the cellar master at the Bordeaux-based Château Lagrange. "But if it works, why not?"