What’s the deal with boxed wine? Is Box Wine Good?

Box Wine Does Have Advantages

Hi, I’m Tim from Elma Wine and Liquor. We sell a lot of boxed wine here , as do many liquor stores throughout the country. Boxed wine is actually a bag inside the box. A pouch holds the wine and has a tap so you can dispense a glass at a time and keep the rest of the wine fresh. One of the big advantages of boxed wine is just that – you can poor a glass or two and keep the rest of the wine fresh in the bag because the oxygen doesn’t get to the wine. Five liter boxes like this Franzia have been around for a while and they are very popular. In part because they are very reasonably priced for the amount of wine you get as well as the ability to keep it fresh.

Wine connoisseurs or people that might enjoy more expensive wine may say that bottled wine is a little bit better quality. For the most part that is true. In order to make these big large boxes, they have to make mass quantity of the wine and any time you are producing something on a very large, mass scale you are going to compromise little bits of quality here and there.

Premiumization of Box Wine

Lately we have had a large surge in the three liter boxed wine category. A handful of companies like Black Box and Bota Box are producing much better quality wine and opting to package it in a bag-in-box format as opposed to a bottle format, because it is a little bit cheaper packaging wise. The cost of the actual cardboard box and the bag that the wine goes in to is lower than the bottles in many cases. It is also much lighter weight, relative to the glass, so shipping the product is a little bit cheaper.

The three liter box category has really been taking off lately. The savings in the packaging costs and the shipping costs translate in to lower price product relative to bottled wine at the same quality level.

So if you are someone who enjoys a glass of wine every couple of days and you don’t like the idea of opening a whole bottle, letting it sit there and then dumping it out a few days later then you may want to consider one of these newer brands of boxed wine.

Is Box Wine Good?

In conclusion about boxed wines – some of the key takeaways are that they are a good format for someone who drinks a glass here and there but does not go through a whole bottle quickly enough. The taps used on the boxed wines allow the wine out without allowing any oxygen to go back in and oxidize the wine.

When you open up a bottle of wine, even if you put the cork back into it, the rest of the wine in the bottle has been exposed to that oxygen and it starts degrading in quality over the next few hours and days. Whereas with the boxed wine, you are not going to get that degradation of the wine still in the bag.

Box Over Jug For Freshness

If you know somebody who still drinks one of those large format bottles, like the four liter bottles of wine and it takes them a couple of weeks to get through it, you should recommend that they try boxed wine for that oxidation reason. Those large format bottles, the big jugs of wine that used to be very popular, do not hold up well after they have been open. Whereas these five liter boxes hold up over the course of weeks, or even a couple of months.

So the bottom line is boxed wine has it’s place in the wine world. There are some people that really enjoy it for the practicality of being able to pour a glass here and there and not worry about wasting what is left in the bottle. And there is also a growing trend of premium to upper end quality wine being packaged in boxes. So if you are a wine connoisseur or a person that has traditionally snuffed their nose at boxed wine, you should try try one of these out.

Many of them also come in smaller 500 ml boxes – tetra packs. These open just like a normal wine bottle so they do not stay good as long once they are open, but they are a great way to sample the wine that comes in the three liter boxes.

That’s it for today, thank you very much for reading “Is Box Wine Good?”, we really appreciate feedback and comments. We would also love to hear some of your questions about wine and liquor so we can make future videos to address those. To see our past videos, click here, or to be sure you see our newest videos subscribe on YouTube. Thanks very much. Cheers!

Products Featured:

Franzia Chillable Red 5L
Andrew Murray Syrah 750ml
Black Box Cabernet Sauvignon 3L
Bota Box Nighthawk Red Blend 3L
Peter Vella Moscato Sangria 5L