Determined to find a more eco-friendly way to store and sell wine, a Sonoma County-based winery has embraced a new strategy of delivering and distributing the elixir in reusable stainless-steel jugs.
The NPA's Kleen Kanteen
The winery, dubbed the Natural Process Alliance, or NPA, serves up wine not in glass bottles, but instead in jugs from Kleen Kanteen, a stainless-steel bottle-maker based in Chico.
Wines on the current menu: pinot gris, chardonnay and pinot noir.
The NPA and its sister winery, Salinia, are the brainchildren of Kevin Kelley, and are both based in Santa Rosa. The NPA is Kelley’s project to promote local, natural wine; the wines are sold in reusable metal canteens within a 100-mile radius of the winery.
That means that most of the wines produced by the NPA will be distributed in and around Sonoma County (San Francisco is in the coverage area). It also means that in order to sample these wines, you either need to pick up one of the reusable containers, or dine at a “partner” restaurant.
(Participating restaurants that purchase wine exchange empty jugs for full ones in a milkman-style relationship.)
Critics have hailed the project as genius because of its aim to eliminate waste: there’s no bottle, no cork. Another reason to get excited about the project, of course, is marketing—because no other winery is selling wine in this fashion, the NPA has a stranglehold on eco-consciousness.
That monopoly is primed to expand over the months ahead. Last month, Kelley hired Hardy Wallace, the guy who won a blogger gig with Murphy-Goode as part of that winery’s 2009 search for someone to fill “A Really Goode Job,” to head up sales and marketing for NPA and Salinia.
The endeavor also has the attention of the SF Chronicle’s Jon Bonne. We encourage you to check it out, too.
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