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The packaging is our brand. You'll never see Bonfire in a bottle." Pouches, Moynihan said, are best filled with premium wine. Stores tend to locate the brightly colored packaging up front rather than in back with the value wines. "I want to be in the premium wine category, not the value category," he added. "We're not going to make a 4-liter or 5-liter pouch." At this point, the mass-producers of value and premium wines haven't stepped into the pouch game. They are, according to an industry consultant who didn't want to be quoted, standing on the sidelines, waiting for the right moment to step in. At that point, they'll flood the market with product, leveraging their existing shelf space and buying up smaller wineries that have staked out meaningful market share. "It's going to have a good market share," the consultant said. "Will it be 50%? No. Will it be 10%? I think so." Perhaps most interestingly, there is unanimity on one other aspect of pouch wine: It's creating new markets rather than cannibalizing old. "Brands are extending their wines to venues where wine hasn't been sold before," Moynihan said. "It's increasing the consuming of wine," added de Carbonnieres of Smurfit Kappa, "because you offer consumers a way to take wine to a different place. You would not take a glass bottle on a boat, but now that's another occasion when you could drink wine." The "pouch revolution" is new and exciting technology on a steep learning curve. Pouch manufacturers are frenetically improving the performance of their products. Engineers are tackling the problem of filling the pouches while entrepreneurs install a pouch-filling infrastructure familiar to anyone who has seen a mobile bottling plant pull up to the back of a winery. There are marketers – smart, experienced, filled with fire – designing brands that make premium wine a viable option for NASCAR infields, poolside parties and every place else currently dominated by canned beer. And there are our Millennials, Jen and Jason, facing shelves of infinite wine choices. They've been eating and drinking out of pouches their whole lives. They're about to make their choice, and the wine industry waits to see what it is. Tom Johnson is a writer and busi- ness planning consultant based in Louisville, Ky. He is also the author of the wine blog Louisville Juice (www.louisvillejuice.com). Comments? Please e-mail us at feedback@vwmmedia.com. Claristar® - A Natural Solution for Tartrate Stability (KHT). Available exclusively from Scott Laboratories. www.scottlab.com • info@scottlab.com w w w. v w m media.com M a y - J u n e 2 0 13 | V I N E YA R D & W I N E RY M A N A G E M E N T 45