Though I haven’t tried one - I’ve seen some articles (here’s one) about wines in a box. And I’ve seen them in some of the wine stores.
I’m willing to try it.
That was something a site was saying in a review. That there were complaints that you could taste an odd “plastic taste”. I guess it would be kind of like the way my potato chips tasted funny when my momm put some in a plastic sandwich bag when I was a kid with my lunchbox. I always kind of thought they tasted a bit like the bag.
I’m not sure, but I’d bet it is. The article mentions Boulud, and I remember it being rather on the large side (3 liters sounds about right). Good catch. I’ve never seen it sold anywhere near me, though.
I decided to try and find a wine in a box and see if I liked it. I checked while I was in Target and found their Target Brand wine cube for $9.99. The packaging says it is equivalent to 2 bottles of wine so that’s only $5/bottle which is way cheap so I was prepared to be underwhelmed.
The one I picked was a california Cabernet/Shiraz blend from Napa. The label mentioned the name of the vineyard but I can’t remember it right now.
Anyway, I tried it and my initial reaction was…it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. It was a bit unbalanced. Too much alcohol taste and not much fruit but not entirely undrinkable. I ended up haveing three glasses of it over as many days and it’s growing on me a little (and seems to have softened since I opened it which I didn’t think could happen).
I don’t know how much I’ll drink but that’s more because I’m trying to drink less lately not because I don’t like it.
Reviving this thread to post my belated comments. After this, I’ll start the new thread. As usual, please don’t let the opening of the new thread prevent you from commenting in this one if you’d like.
First of all, Swallowed My Cellphone, I thought this was a really interesting idea, checking out alternate packaging. I had a blast with it because it justified throwing an impromptu wine tasting gathering and we had a lot of fun with it. Thank you for suggesting it. 
I went to the Wine Store and presented the issue to Kevin the Wine Guy. I told him I wanted a box AND a bottle of the same wine so that I could do blind testings to determine: (a) could we tell the difference and (b) if so, which was better. Kevin was intrigued. (BTW, Kevin says “This internet wine club you’re in sounds really fun.”) Off we went to the boxed wine aisle. I asked if they carried any boxed French reds. Kevin looked like this → :dubious: , which I took to mean “no.” This highlighted the first problem. The boxed wines available in my world are not very good, at least by my standards, which are not all that high. Of the available reds, I chose the Waltzing Vine Shiraz from Australia. I then picked up a bottle of the same. Here’s how they stacked up:
BOX: $17.99 for four, that’s right, count’em, four bottles’ worth, no vintage
BOTTLE: $5.99 (!) for the bottle, 2005 vintage
Home I went. I brought out the wine glasses and three neighbors came over. I marked half the glasses with wine charms and left half of them bare. I then gave each of the neighbors one glass of box and one glass of bottle, scribbling down for each neighbor which of their two glasses (charmed or bare) had the box and which the bottle. Then one neighbor went and poured two glasses for me. We toasted, two-fisted drinkers all, and proceeded to taste.
Well. The universal consensus was that the wine was Not Good. This did not suprise me, knowing that my entire outlay for five bottles’ worth was about 26 bucks. But the rest was a little surprising.
There has been so much reflexive snobbery about how terrible box wine is, and then so much written about improvements to alternate packaging, that I was honestly expecting to (a) not be able to tell the difference or (b) find that the box was better, or at least nearly as good, as the bottle. But I’m afraid the wine snobs have the right of it, at least as far as the four of us could tell. We all identified an unpleasant bouquet to the box wine (though we didn’t know it was boxed), that instantly set it apart from the other wine and not in a good way. Though we differed on what we detected (iron, yeast, vinegar), none of us liked it. The “good” wine was virtually tasteless; completely inoffensive I suppose, but you’d have just as much enjoyment from drinking a glass of water. So to us the whole “no air gets in the tetra pak! Each glass is as good as the first one!” is not a positive recommendation. (I should also say that unevenness of “breathing” was not the culprit, either. I didn’t let either one breathe: Uncork/unzip, pour, drink.) Having decided that, yes, boxed wines are bad but, also, comparable bottled wines are not much better, we declared the tasting finished and poured out the wine glasses. I then opened a decent red, brought out the cheese and bread, and we sat around chatting in the twilight. I offered to allow any of my friends to take home the rest of the box wine but they all forcefully declined.
So there you have it! I’ll be buying my wines in bottles, thankyewverymuch, until either the quality of the packaging improves or the selection of available wines improves. But it was a fun thing to try, anyway.
Applauding your testing! Glad you were able to have some fun with it - after all other than enjoying wine that’s what we’re all here for.
I just returned from over a week on the road, didn’t get a chance to participate in this one and think I’ll just accept your results.
Thanks for your thoughtful response Jodi Cool that you were able to do a blind taste test with the neighbors.
The rest of my box of wine is still sitting there. I keep thinking I’ll use it to make stew or sauce o something but eventually it may just go in the trast.
As I said, it wasn’t the worst wine I’ve had but not something I’d buy again. I didn’t get an “off” taste like you did but then again, I wasn’t comparing bottle to box.
BTW, now that I’m sitting here right next to the thing I can let you know that it’s a 2005 50/50 Cabernet/Shiraz blend from CA the label says vinted and bottled by Trinchero Family Estates. St. Helena, Napa County.
This is the first time I’ve had the opportunity to visit their web sites and I see a couple of items there that I’ve tried and liked so I’m forced to break out the box again for another taste here goes…
: pour…swirl…sniff…taste:
Not much different than the first time. Just a bit unbalanced. Heavy alcohol and just not much more in the nose but it’s really not bad. On the palate I am getting notes of vanilla and caramel which is nice but I’m really having to work to get those.
I wish I could get my husband to try it. He tends to have a better palate than me for picking up subtle flavors but he flatly rejected this. He won’t sacrifice his acid reflux problem to a mediocre wine and red wine really gives him a problem.
I’d love it if someone else felt like spending $9.99 at Target to pick this one up and see if they like it. I’d love to hear your thoughts…
Reporting on the French Rabbit - Cabernet Sauvignon: Well for the much heralded “first ‘vintage’ boxed wine”, on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being sewage water and 10 being superb wine to bring to the boss’s dinner party, I’m afraid I can rank it only a 4.5.
I read that a local wine critic begrudgingly gave it (out of a scale of 1 to 5) a 3 or 3.5. Apparently a bunch of critics were invited to try about 60-70 different new, “vintage” tetrapacked wines, and this ranked among the highest at the event, alhthough his overall impression was “Meh.”
And “Meh” is about right for the French Rabbit “vintage” cabernet Sauvignon in a tetrapak. The strange thing is, there isn’t anything really wrong with it, it’s simply utterly unremarkable.
While the wine was not “watery” in the sense that it tasted diluted, it somehow had a watery texture. As if it had no body or heft of any kind. It was missing something. Kind of like the way the undead walk around but have no souls. It was lifeless. Not bad, but lifeless.
It was a just a tiny bit oxidized, but I got the impresison that was by design rather than an unplanned flaw. It gave it not so much of a sourness, but an additional bite, as if it was trying to compensate for the lack of body. Everything else about this wine was totally ordinary. It was perfectly fine to drink, decently balanced, there were no repugnant qualities about it, but it left no lasting impression of any kind. Neither postivie nor negative. Just “Meh.”
I would take it to an outdoor event. Like a barbecue, or a picnic, or an outdoor reception where sandals on your feet would be acceptable attire. While I think it would be perfectly fine as a “plain Jane”, straight-laced table wine for dinner (and in fact is so unremarkable you could probably drink it with almost any meal under the sun), it just isn’t notable enough to bring to a dinner party that was more formal ie/ one where you had cloth napkins and the good silverware.
Again, there is nothing wrong with it. I’ll gladly take it camping because it’s far better than the other plonk we tried (and you can get half-size tetra packs thata hold about 16 fluid oz.) and I wouldn’t mind having it in the house as the generic go-to wine for our own pesonal consumption. I wouldn’t really go out of my way to find it if it became a “hard to find item”.
It was acceptable to the palate, just… drab. I wouldn’t tell you to avoid it, but I woulnd’t tell you to make a special trip for it. You wouldn’t regret drinking it, but you’d probably find it instantly forgettable.