Box Wine - oh yeah

[GQgeek]

I've had some box wine that's been decent to good. Some is truely horrendous though. I would be pretty happy if I could find something good to have with dinner a couple nights a week though. Bottles are expensive (and i'm unable to buy the cheap ones) and they go bad quickly.

 

[LabelKing]

What about fruity wine coolers?

 

[Homme]

In Australia it's called 'goon'. The #1 choice for poor university chicks.

 

[Matt]

haha, be fair Mick, the 'premium' Australian casks are on par with the low end of bottles. While Ive guzzled my share of boxed up Coolabah before the year 9 social, I will plead guilty to drinking the "higher end casks" (*phrase used loosely) well into my professional life. Basically, I used to live with my ex, she was a white drinker and me a red, and we both enjoyed a glass of wine with dinner. Since bottles send it stale fast, and will get really expensive given our inability to settle the red vs white fight, we used to have a box each that we would pour a glass out of in the privacy of our own home when no one was looking. Admittedly, if anyone came over, the boxes were promptly hidden

 

[Concordia]

http://www.dtourwine.com/

Haven't tried it, but Lafon makes some of the very best white wines in the world under his regular label.

 

[65535]

I've tried a few different types of box wine, but i really didn;t like them, and I really wanted to. It's cheap as hell and is a really nice way to get fucked up (pouring skills are not required)...

It didn;t taste good enough to warrant the calorie intake. So back to my bottled favorites

 

[MCsommerreid]

Like Tarmac mentioned there's now this group of premium/super-premium wine in a box. It's the exact same stuff they put in the bottles, but in a box.

The whole bladder vs bottle is the same as cork vs synthcork vs cap. Extreme purists would say anything not coming in a corked glass bottle is swill, even if it was the exact same product.

I do suspect wine would age a bit better in a bottle than a box, though.

 

[underwearer]

Originally Posted by MCsommerreid

Like Tarmac mentioned there's now this group of premium/super-premium wine in a box.

I do suspect wine would age a bit better in a bottle than a box, though.

Its not about aging wine but rather the perishability of uncorked wine. Bag-in-a-box wine has a bad rap just as canned beer does but that doesnt mean a good wine out of a bag would not taste good just as a good beer out of a can would. Plastic is porous and glass is not so glass will always be better for storage, or stainless steel, or aluminum. Aluminum is best for beer because it is impervious to light and gas which both reek havock on beer.

 

[MCsommerreid]

Originally Posted by underwearer

Its not about aging wine but rather the perishability of uncorked wine. Bag-in-a-box wine has a bad rap just as canned beer does but that doesnt mean a good wine out of a bag would not taste good just as a good beer out of a can would. Plastic is porous and glass is not so glass will always be better for storage, or stainless steel, or aluminum. Aluminum is best for beer because it is impervious to light and gas which both reek havock on beer.

I would have thought the sealed bag would have less air permeability than a traditional bottle because the bag doesn't have leakage through the cork.

 

[hi-val]

I tried to track down the WSJ article, but all I could find was a blog writeup on it: http://www.boxwines.org/articles/wsj...-for-weeks.htm They said the Fisheye Shiraz was a good wine that they would drink happily. Worth noting. If you want to sign up for the free 2 week subscription to Fine Cooking, you can read their reviews below or just note the ones they put in the picture (all rated drinkable to good); http://www.taunton.com/finecooking/a...px?ac=ts&ra=fp Review of 31 boxed wines by the SF Gate: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...IGV13EPSU1.DTL Good restaurants have been putting box wine on their wine lists, I read about that recently as well.

 

[underwearer]

Originally Posted by MCsommerreid

I would have thought the sealed bag would have less air permeability than a traditional bottle because the bag doesn't have leakage through the cork.

Bottled wine has active yeast in it which will scavenge any oxygen that may cause oxidation and as long as the bottle is stored properly (not letting the cork dry out)and the yeast is occasionally roused the wine will age indefinitely. Bagged wine has most likely been pastuerized which kills the yeast and whatever off flavor killing potential it had. Besides, the entire bag is porous where only the cork is in a bottle and I believe since the yeast works indefinitley there will always be a blanket of co2 keeping gasses from getting in.

 

[eg1]

Originally Posted by underwearer

Bottled wine has active yeast in it which will scavenge any oxygen that may cause oxidation and as long as the bottle is stored properly (not letting the cork dry out) and the yeast is occasionally roused the wine will age indefinitely. Bagged wine has most likely been pastuerized which kills the yeast and whatever off flavor killing potential it had. Besides, the entire bag is porous where only the cork is in a bottle and I believe since the yeast works indefinitley there will always be a blanket of co2 keeping gasses from getting in.

Hence the move to screw-tops among more forward thinking winemakers ...

 

[Ludeykrus]

Box wine definitely has its advantages over bottles, practically speaking. Heck, isn't it right around 7-10% of bottles with natural corks turn "corked"?

A few weeks ago, I was trying to cut down my alcohol consumption and picked up some boxes on sale. Block merlot was a great simple merlot, even though I don't like merlot. Trove is a very decent Cabernet that I am looking to actually keep on hand, but the store I bought it from discounted it because they were discontinuing that brand.

 

[Dewey]

Box wine is also good for cooking (white) and mulling (red).

 

[hi-val]

Originally Posted by underwearer

Bottled wine has active yeast in it which will scavenge any oxygen that may cause oxidation and as long as the bottle is stored properly (not letting the cork dry out)and the yeast is occasionally roused the wine will age indefinitely. Bagged wine has most likely been pastuerized which kills the yeast and whatever off flavor killing potential it had. Besides, the entire bag is porous where only the cork is in a bottle and I believe since the yeast works indefinitley there will always be a blanket of co2 keeping gasses from getting in.

Do you have citations on the pasteurization and the porosity of the bags? For that matter, that live yeast exists in bottles? I cannot ever remember drinking wine on lees, as that's racked off. Aside from the small amount of yeast in the secondary fermentation of Champagne, I'm unaware of any wine in which yeasts are alive in the bottles. Even batonnage happens in casks only. I could stand to be corrected, though.

Yeast also only lives as long as there is not enough alcohol to kill them and enough sugar to eat. Most wines are fermented to dryness. Ergo, I would imagine that there are no active yeasts in wine.

Box wine is certainly not meant for cellaring but if you read the WSJ article blurb I linked to, they test and verify that the wine is fine 6 weeks after opening the vessel.

Looking forward to some links!

Ludeykrus, it depends on who you ask. The cork industry says <1% are corked, while California growers have reported up to a 7% cork taint. Glass corks are probably the best solution to combatting both TBA and other off aromas.