Women, booze and a mission
Nomen est omen. The women-run Sparkke Change Beverage Company from Adelaide, which has brought together some of Australia’s youngest brewers and winemakers, has two goals: to create great booze and trigger social change – not just in society at large but equally in the male-dominated alcohol industry.
Believing that it is best to start a political discussion over a can of booze (a “tinnie” in Australian lingo), Sparkke has chosen to print bold political messages on its cans. Cans are a popular package in the Australian market not least since several craft brewers actively embraced it. Craft brewer Pirate Life, also from Adelaide, which will brew about 30,000 hl beer this year, only packages its beers in cans and kegs.
Sparkke has four products out already: a cider addressing sexual consent carrying the line, “Consent Can’t Come After You Do”, a ginger beer raising asylum seeker issues through its tag “Boundless Plains To Share”, a Pilsner targeting Australia Day called “Change The Date” and a hard lemonade tackling gender equality through the line “Nipples are Nipples”.
Sparkke, which operates out of the Vale Brewery in the McLaren Vale region south of Adelaide, is run by eight women from diverse backgrounds. Describing themselves as “professional brewers, winemakers, communicators and activists”, the group is best understood as a social enterprise that happens to place its bets on booze.
Among them are Agi Gajic, one of the few Australian female head brewers under 30, and head winemaker Sarah Lyons.
Ms Gajic started her brewing career with the Western Australian craft brewery, Gage Roads, before moving to Sydney to join another craft brewery, Young Henrys, for four years. She is now in charge of producing Sparkke’s debut range of pilsner, cider, alcoholic lemonade and ginger beer.
Sparkke hit the news late last year when it launched a Pozible crowdfunding campaign to bring its products to the market. Within four weeks it had collected over AUD 100,000 (USD 79,000) towards its target of pre-selling 10,000 cases of its products. It said it would donate ten percent of sales towards the causes promoted on its cans.
The women’s passion for what is on their cans is only equalled by their passion for what is in them. In an effort to promote responsible drinking, three of the four drinks come at a moderate alcohol content of 3.5 percent ABV.
While Sparkke certainly appreciates the media response it has received so far, there is one response it could do without: a legal suit.
Sparkke’s latest product is a sparkling wine in a can for which it reportedly raised AUD 450,000 (USD 355,000) through the Sydney-based investment firm Clinton Capital Partners. The product is overseen by winemaker Ms Lyons, a recipient of the prestigious Pernod Ricard Scholarship.
Sparkke’s “White Wine + Bubbles” will be packaged in a slim 250 ml can with the message “Say I Do” to support marriage equality. Trouble is, the whole concept of wine in a can in Australia has been patented by the Melbourne-based company Barokes, behind which are Greg Stokes and Steve Barics.
In 2001 the pair took out a patent on an anti-corrosive lining for cans called “Vinsafe”. Subsequently, they took out further patents on how to prepare the wine for canning to optimise shelf-life. Guarding their patents vigorously and even successfully suing wine producers that had not infringed upon them, many now think that wine in a can is a category too loosely defined to be patented in its entirety.
As Ms Gajic told Brauwelt International: “Currently, our pilot batch is in cans (and is wonderful) but we haven’t yet canned our commercially available product. We did a 1,000 litre trial run over in Victoria and have had several laboratory tests done on these cans to confirm that we have not violated the ‘Vinsafe’ method that is patented by Barokes.”
Ms Gajic went on to explain that “we are however expecting to hear from them and we are prepared in the event of this as we are confident that we have not stepped into their territory.”
We are probably going to be hearing a lot more about Sparrke and its wine in a can.
