Tiquette Bramlett’s Line of Canned Wine Pours Into Community

The wine aisle used to be filled with rows of glass and cork, but now there’s a portion of the aisle that glints with aluminum. Canned wine has moved from the margins to the middle, and Henderson Ave is leaning into that shift. Founder Tiquette Bramlett sees canned wine as an invitation to the people traditional wine marketing rarely addresses.

Bramlett’s route into wine was steered by a major life change. After graduating from Chapman University with degrees in organizational leadership and vocal performance, she had every intention of becoming a professional singer.

The week after graduation, a thyroid cancer diagnosis redirected everything. Her mother gave her a copy of the Wine Bible during treatment, and somewhere between pages filled with maps, producers and harvest stories, a new path opened.

“My diagnosis reset everything,” says Bramlett. “When learning more about the wine industry, I paid close attention to how community was really the center of old-world style production.”

Rewriting the Industry Rules with Canned Wine

That reading planted a seed of curiosity that drew closer toward the wine industry. The Bay Area native moved to Oregon, and a six-month experiment in a tasting room became a ten-year career. Bramlett came to Oregon certified and ready, putting her sommelier credentials to work advocating for a region she believed was underestimated.

She stayed, learned operations, watched customer behavior and observed how producers bring in a harvest shaped by a climate unlike anywhere else in the country.

Oregon’s Pacific-influenced weather patterns and long, cool growing seasons give grapes more time to develop, producing wines that are fresher and more balanced than what comes out of warmer states. That depth of exposure gave her the tools to later design a canned wine portfolio with a purpose of building community.

Henderson Ave launched in July 2025 with a name drawn directly from Bramlett’s childhood street in Menlo Park, California, the block where she first understood what community and hospitality look like.

The launch event reflected the same spirit of her beloved street. Bramlett and her team recreated her grandmother’s backyard, setting up games, laying out family-style food and providing a space for attendees to freely gather without agenda.

Bramlett made a deliberate choice to produce canned wine rather than bottled to alleviate the formality that has long kept wine at arm’s length from casual drinkers. There is no aging conversation to navigate, decanting ritual to learn, or concern about whether the occasion is special enough.

“I tell people not to save Henderson Ave for a special occasion,” says the winemaker. “You are a special moment. Crack a can open and start enjoying it now.”

Questions about aging, storage and quality frequently arise around canned wine. Bramlett emphasizes that Henderson Ave’s wines are built for near-term enjoyment and the winemaking process mirrors that of bottled wine up until the packaging step.

The current lineup includes a chillable red, a dry white and a sparkling white blend, all packaged as canned wine. The chillable red wine in a can uses a small addition of white blend to keep the texture light and approachable, which helps new drinkers ease into red wine without feeling overwhelmed. The dry white leans on dry riesling, offering clean, food-friendly acidity with low sugar. The sparkling wine is carbonated by force, giving it a bright, soda-like fizz layered with fruit and floral notes.

“I want beginners to feel comfortable bringing our cans anywhere and experienced drinkers to feel like they chose well,” says Bramlett.

When early demand cleared Henderson Ave’s inventory ahead of projections, the four-person team saw it as an opportunity to recalibrate rather than simply restock, narrowing their focus to partnerships that fit the brand’s mission of community-centered gathering.

“People have been so enthusiastic that we’ve had to slow down and reevaluate where we can realistically be,” says the entrepreneur. “We’ve had to remind ourselves that we’re still a boutique brand, even when demand feels huge.”

RELATED: Chevonne Ball Recounts Her Oenophile Journey to Dirty Radish

Harvesting a Legacy

From becoming the first Black woman to lead a winery in Oregon at Compris Vineyard in 2021 to chairing the Oregon Wine Board today, Bramlett has occupied positions no one who looks like her had held before, with additional roles as vice president of Chosen Family Wines, executive board member at UC Davis’s School of Viticulture and Enology and board member of Travel Portland along the way.

USA Today named her a Woman of the Year in 2023, a recognition she holds with the awareness that its greatest value is the visibility it creates for Black women considering whether wine has space for them.

“I never pretend to be invisible in these spaces, because my presence provides a lens for people to see their likeness,” Bramlett declares. “I want people to say if she can do it, so can I.”

In the name of advocacy, Bramlett also launched her nonprofit, Our Legacy Harvested, in 2020 during the pandemic, when isolation and the need for community were running high. The organization created a harvest internship for BIPOC individuals looking to enter the wine industry, complete with mentorship, lodging, transportation and hands-on work across tasting rooms, vineyards and production facilities.

“I wanted people to have a real harvest season under their belt so they can gain clarity around the production process,” says Bramlett. “Some people finish and know immediately this is the career they want. Others finish knowing just as certainly that they don’t, and that answer is worth having, too.”

Our Legacy Harvested and Henderson Ave line of canned wine operate as separate entities, but they share the same foundation. Both exist to bring more people into a space that has historically kept them out, one through education and access, the other through a can of wine that says you already belong here.

Henderson Ave currently operates within Oregon while building toward out-of-state pop-ups and collaborations planned for later in 2026. For now, consumers outside of Oregon can purchase their canned wine through the brand’s website, and stay up to date with new product launches and event dates by following along on Instagram.

The Henderson Ave founder  leaves this hint of what to expect next. “Stay tuned – we like surprising people by popping up in places they never expected to see us.”