I should start off by saying that I’m not much of a wine drinker but my wife is and my father is a wine snob. We are making a leg of lamb for Christmas Eve and we needed a lot of wine to marinade it in. My wife’s family recipe calls for using the cheapest wine you can find provided it is somewhat sweet. I went to Total Wines, which has a huge selection and asked a lady who works there for something cheap and sweet. She pointed me to a box wine which was $10.50 for 5 liters. My wife and I tried a small glass before dumping the rest of it on the lamb. It was absolutely horrid. She described the taste as that of a dry wine that someone added some artificial sweetener to which seems as good a description as any.
What I would like to know is if all wines sold in a box are horrible? Are there any good wines sold in a box? All of the wines sold in a box in the store were inexpensive.
Is there something about the wine process that makes it so only bad wine can be sold in a box? It seems to me that a boxed wine would be convenient for those people who would like to just have a glass of wine with a meal but live alone or with someone who dislikes wine. You could avoid the headache of having to finish off the bottle before it turns to vinegar.
There are a few decent boxed wines out on the market. Black Box, Fish Eye, Corbett Canyon and Delicato are all perfectly acceptable sipping wines.
The box is very convenient for exactly the reasons you mention. The problem with the package however is shelf life. Compared to the traditional glass bottle and cork/screwcap, it is *drastically *shorter.
The bladders are gas permeable, giving bag in the box wines a shelf life of just one year or less. That alone is probably the number one reason you’ll really only find less expensive wines in them. Why would a winemaker put so much time and money into making a stellar wine only to put it in a package that will deem it garbage if it isn’t purchased and consumed within a year? She wouldn’t. What you’ll find in most bag in the box brands is ‘excess’ wine. There were a whole lot more brands on the market in 2002 or 2003 when there was a real wine glut in the US. It’s also the ‘dumping’ ground of many of the larger wineries wines that either don’t meet the standards of their higher tier brands or were never intended to. Just basic, cheap to produce wine.
Still, there are some good bargains out there, and they are perfect for cooking with, easy to transport, and the wine will definitely stay fresh longer once opened compared to wine in a bottle.
I keep a 5L box each of Burgandy, Cab and Zin in my booze fridge. I pick up either Vella or Franzia, whichever is on sale at the time. They all taste pretty good after a few liters of homebrew beer, a huge Rib-eye, baked potato with butter, sour cream, bacon and chives, sauteed mushrooms (in the wine, no less!) and a 1/4 cheesecake. I eat/drink like this about 4 nites a week. The other nites I over-do it.
Not only am I a gourmet, I am a “health food” counisour. Or however its spelled. Well, I’m off to the booze fridge just now!
Thanks, psycat90. That answers my question. Why do they use gas permeable bags? I guess that I’m interested in knowing if there are alternatives to the glass bottle and the cork.
Gatopescado, is there anything that doesn’t taste good after a few liters of homebrew beer and a good meal? Doesn’t the stuff give you a bad hangover. I remember drinking too much box wine in college and it gave me one of the worst hangovers in my life.
As far as I know, it’s just the nature of food grade plastic film. It is gas permeable and the wine will become oxidized relatively quickly. I can only assume that if there is something else out there film-wise that is not permeable and still food grade, someone would be using it or testing it. Could be, I don’t really know though.
Alternatives to glass and cork? Number one would be glass and screw cap. Those are really the best ways to package a wine as far as I can tell. There are a few other neat things out there like this glass stopper that has tested well so far, but hasn’t really taken off in the market.
The key here is “too much” and “wine.” The combination of alcohol to excess and all the cogeners in the wine are what did it to you. If you had imbibed that much alcohol as vodka, it likely wouldn’t have given you as bad a hangover.
I second the Corbett Canyon box wine. Perfectly acceptable wine when you need a large amount and want to keep your wallet as well.
I drink box wines pretty much exclusively. There’s a brand in a black box with a big U on it, from Portugal, I think, that I prefer. It’s 5 liters for $25 and it’s a nice dry-ish white. I love it. It’ll last me a good 3 weeks having a glass or two every night.
The thing I’ve noticed is that by the last few glasses of box wine it tastes much more alcohol-y than it did before. Is this just my imagination?