By Laurie Wachter
The wine industry has been grappling with attracting younger generations for more than a decade. Marian Leitner-Waldman, co-founder and CEO of Archer Roose Wines, brought a fresh outsider’s perspective to this issue and developed an innovative approach to making wine a part of these consumers’ everyday lives.
Twelve years ago, she and her husband, David, finished dinner with a half-empty bottle of premium wine. It motivated them to start speculating on how they could make it possible to have a glass of wine in the same way others reach for a beer.
“I was working at the World Bank at the time,” Leitner-Waldman recalls, “and I pursued this question on the side until we figured out how to crack the model.” Two years later, the couple founded Archer Roose Wines with a mission to “democratize wine by introducing consumers to luxury wines in an approachable format.”
Modern packaging for modern drinkers
Her solution is to create canned luxury wines from both known and emerging regions while maintaining total transparency into the grapegrowing and winemaking process. Archer Roose Wines uses “really fun, awesome, hungry young winemakers,” sustainably-grown grapes and a low-intervention winemaking process. She partnered with Cornell University and Enartis to co-fund category research with the NY Wine and Grape Foundation, sharing their findings with other wineries.
Using cans also reduces wine’s carbon footprint by 60%, and single-serve cans meet the lifestyle needs of younger consumers who want more control over their alcohol consumption and the ability to drink it on a greater variety of occasions.
“I totally believe in bottles and bottle-aging wine,” Leitner-Waldman says. “But we need to recognize that 97% of all wine volume bought and sold in the United States is less than 2 years old and consumed within 72 hours after purchase.”
Actress and producer Elizabeth Banks joined Archer Roose Wines as an investor and chief creative officer in 2021, and the ads they create together are irreverent, fun and distinctive in a category that has historically taken itself more seriously.
Leitner-Waldman also developed a new route to market that starts by working with beer distributors in independent markets to test alternative venues, such as cinemas and sports stadiums, and then scaling in partnership with a national account channel.
Transparency, education and humor
The company’s success caught the eye of Constellation Brands, which in 2022 invested in Archer Roose Wines as part of its Focus on Female Founders initiative, providing operational support and the funds to expand distribution.
Chris Badenhoop, director of corporate venture strategy at Constellation, explains, “What drove us to want to learn more about Archer Roose Wines was its innate ability to speak about wine in a fun and adventurous way. We saw them creating a paradigm shift by proving that it could weaken long-standing barriers to entry for consumers by bringing transparency, education and humor to the forefront.”
To wineries uncertain about canned wines, Leitner-Waldman says, “If we market wine appropriately, the things that we all love most about wine will be preserved. The only thing that changes is the vessel of delivery so that we can better reach people according to their occasion and lifestyle.”
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Laurie Wachter
Laurie Wachter is a leader in consumer behavior and direct-to-consumer marketing analytics, having worked for consumer packaged goods companies such as Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, Catalina Marketing and IRI (now Circana). Based in Northern California’s wine country, she writes about innovation and the business of food, wine and beverages for a global client base.
