Oeno & Co offers Rhône Valley wines in tubes

Nicolas Foulquier launched Oeno & Co in 2013. The company aims to offer consumers the chance to buy a selection of wines from Rhône Valley estates in the form of a box containing 60ml tubes.

Châteauneuf du Pape, Gigondas, Vacqueyras, Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise are among the estates that have already signed up to the venture. Oeno & Co can now offer more than 30 benchmark wines in a tailor-made or pre-selected box containing two, three or five tubes in shades of red, white and rosé.

The tube is a patented glass vial, topped by a screw-on aluminium cap, specially designed to ensure that the wines are properly preserved, created in partnership with the INRA in Montpellier and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers in Paris.

A special conditioning process, carried out within an inert atmosphere, is used to fill the tubes, to ensure that there is no deterioration of the wine’s organoleptic properties.

For wine-producers, this is an opportunity for them to showcase their wine in an innovative, elegant but also practical way; after all, it’s easier to send a box by post than a bottle. It’s a perfect marketing tool, and for tourists passing through the region, it’s a sort of ‘oenological postcard’ that can easily be take home.

Of course, these tubes are not suitable for long-term storage, as the smaller the quantity of wine, the faster it will spoil; the sample should, therefore, be consumed within 6 months.

14 July 2014 - Felicity Murray The Drinks Report, editor