We have a house on a barrier island and getting there is never easy. You have to load up the car, drive a long time, charter a boat, load the stuff onto the boat, off load the stuff onto the dock, carrier it to a car we keep on the island, load the car, drive to the house and then take the stuff up two flights of stairs. Of course, one can not consider sitting on the porch at the ocean without a glass or two of wine to complete the experience. Hauling a case or two of wine all that way is not easy. It takes up a lot of room on all those transports, is heavy, and then there is the issue of disposing of all that glass in an environmentally responsible way.
One day I decided, what the heck, why not try a 3 liter of a box wine?
So I purchased a Bota Box Shiraz and it wasn’t bad. Ditto for the Bota Box Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio.
Box Wine Bladder Failure equals Bad Box Wine Review
On a recent trip I decided to try a Turning Leaf Pinot Noir in a box. When I opened it, it was nasty. I thought it was oxidized, but then wondered about that since box wines are a “closed” system. They use a bladder which is one of the pluses of a box wine and the wine will keep for a month although I’ve never tested that theory. But this box-o-wine was bad and there is no returning a box wine for credit.
Box wines are worth considering in another venue.
When taking a cruise, we are always like to have wine in the cabin as it is cheaper than running up those cruise ship tabs. Box wine is perfect in that kind of situation. A 3 liter red and a 3 liter white is good for two of us for a week. And if you have to throw some of away — well, there is no guilt. But here is the problem for me—there just aren’t many decent box wines. Surely this might be an option worth considering for all that juice that can’t make it into a winemaker’s primary bottling. Of course, there are the distributors, wine merchants and the public who view box wines as a step below jug wine, but great breakout box wine may find a market niche and start to change the bias of the wine drinking public.
Black Box Wine looks to be grabbing that market!
While I haven’t tried Black Box Wine yet  to review, yet they have quite a bit of buzz around them for a wine in a box! Not only is there a Black Box Merlot wine, but they have a reserve merlot and a reserve Chardonnay as well! They even say that the Black Box wine is from grapes all over the world’s best wine regions. So while I will never, ever leave the glory of a fine wine in a glass bottle behind, sometimes there is actually a time and place for wine in a box!
