(Forbes) - My inbox is filled with press releases and stories about the biggest thing in wine packaging for 2016: the can.

Even Whole Foods is betting on the can. It’s less expensive than glass, light weight, recyclable, and perfect for our mobile lifestyle.

Product loss and transportation cost have always been a concern in wine packaging. The ancient amphorae was heavy and fragile. It was replaced by the lighter—somewhat fragile—bulbous glass bottle. But neither could be stacked, which wasted valuable space in transport.

Haut Brion

Premium wine historically has had a limited market. Even today, only about 5% of wine consumers in America support the high end, high-priced wine industry. If that isn’t an opening for experimental packaging, what is?

A 1967 development at Australia’s Penfolds perfected Thomas Angove’s 1965 wine-in-a box invention. In America, known for innovative packaging, Almaden Vineyards introduced bag-in-the-box on the domestic market in 1981. The wine inside the box was on the low end of the price scale, suitable for the 95% of wine consumers.

Before Prohibition, a great deal of wine in the United States was sold from the cask, both at retail and at bars and restaurants. After Repeal, It was unheard of for someone in the 5% group to stoop to ordering a glass of cheap wine in a restaurant. Until the late 1940s, distributor sales reps mostly sold top-tier wines to restaurants.

Almaden Vineyards stepped in again with the introduction to restaurants of Grenache Rosé; it ultimately kickstarted varietal labeling of mass marketed domestic wines. A few years later, Almaden Vineyards had another success supplying bars and restaurants with a small stainless steel “milk” tank with a barrel facade, for by-the-glass pours.