Is Wine-in-a-Box the Superior Packaging for Wine?

Like screw-cap wine, wine in a box can evoke the taste of watered-down characterless cheap wine. That stigma has been changed recently with the advent of 3-liter box wines. While Franzia has been selling budget 5-liter box wine for much longer, the market for quality 3-liter wine boxes or "wine casks" has been growing; a 3-liter box is equivalent to four 750-milliliter bottles of wine. The economical packaging cuts down on shipping and packaging costs, letting the consumer purchase quality wine at a much lower price. The box is big overseas, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer over half of all wine purchased in Australia is in a box and over 60 percent of wine drank in Sweden is from a box.

The packaging is also convenient on the go, there is no fear of bottle breakage with a cardboard box and it weighs considerably less than it's bottled counterpart. Easy transportability means that you can be drinking Pinot Noir at the next outdoor musical event you go to, Cabernet Sauvignon while boating, camping or hiking. The bag can be taken out of the box and quickly chilled on a bed of ice when you don't have access to a refrigerator.

For those of you who think it would be gauche or even déclassé to serve premium box wine at your next dinner party, you can serve the wine in a classy decanter. Not only will this look nice to your guests, it will let the wine "breathe" and enhance its flavor and aroma, typically only red wines will benefit from this. If you just remove the cork off a bottle, it will not expose as much air as if the wine were in a decanter, this has to do with the amount of surface area at the top of the bottle; it's not enough.

A disadvantage of boxed wine is that it has a limited shelf-life. Depending on the quality of bag used, box wine is usually good for six months to a year. I recommend purchasing a wine cask that is less than six-months old. You can check the date of manufacture on the box to pick the freshest box. Contrary to popular belief, most wines are not suitable for aging and do not improve with age. While some wines like Beaujolais nouveau are meant to be drunk as soon as possible, fine wines such as Port and others tend to improve with age. The reason boxed wine has a limited shelf-life is because microscopic pores are in the bag which expose the wine to oxygen at much faster pace than it would in a bottle, different manufacturers use different bags, some are higher quality or have more layers than others; hence the range of shelf life.

A major advantage with boxed wine is that it is not subject to cork taint. You can also open a box and drink from it for up to a month and the wine will still be fresh. This is attractive for health conscious drinkers who would like to drink a glass of red wine a day; some studies have suggested that having a moderate intake of alcohol can have beneficial effects to your health. Red wine in particular has been named as beneficial. For the beer drinker who pays at least a dollar or more per beer for good quality beer and wants to drink healthier will be surprised to learn that they can drink good quality wine for around the same price with purchase of a cask wine.

Industry leader Black Box is the company that introduced the concept of quality wine in a 3 liter box to America. Black Box wines were innovative in that they were vintage-dated and they listed the appellation the grapes were from on the box. Ryan Sproule, founder of Black Box was a Négociant of sorts, meaning he would buy grapes from local appellations in California such as Napa Valley and Sonoma County. California grows some of the best grapes in the world and can produce some very good wine. The production of Black Box is now handled by Pacific Wine Partners who also distribute Australian premium box brands such as Hardys and Banrock Station. A 3-liter cask of Black Box can be typically purchased on sale for 20 dollars with a suggested retail price of 25 dollars.

Another excellent place for growing grapes in the United States is Washington State. You can get great value wines from many of the wineries there because it is not as well-known of a place for wine as California or France is. Family-owned Tefft Cellars Winery in Outlook, Washington sells a 4 liter box of Non-Vintage Washington State Cabernet/Merlot and Non-Vintage Chardonnay for around 23 dollars before shipping. In an e-mail correspondence Wine Maker Joel Tefft states "While in the tasting room my customers used to say how they kept my wine for special occasions and most had a box of California wine in the closet for everyday wine. Well, I thought I would like to have people drink my wine everyday, so I began to think if I could put good quality wine in a box, and so I did. The response was overwhelming and we now bag over 35,000 per year.". Jeff also mentioned he uses "real, good quality wine", I don't know what Joel means by real wine, as if some unscrupulous company was passing off fake wine.

Will the American public ever get over its fear of the box as a receptacle for wine? Maybe, maybe not. Surely bottles are here to stay because they have tradition behind them and they more romantic than boxes are but boxes are an arguably superior packaging method. Besides, how else could someone drink a whole 1.5 liter bottle before it goes bad? The box is the answer for that. Good but affordable wine for everyday drinking is now available in boxes now but will we ever see the high-end stuff in boxes? Probably not but time will tell.

Sources:

Matthew Amster-Burton, "Do Wines Really Get Better With Age?" MSN Lifestyle - The Wine Life

Richard Kinssies, "On Wine: Premium wines from a box? Tasting is believing." Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Black Box Wines, "Boxed Wine - FAQ - High End Wine in a Box." Black Box Wines Website.

Joel Tefft, Personal e-mail correspondence.