Bottom Line/Personal: Are bag-in-the-box wines ever OK to drink?
Amy Dixon: Absolutely. We had this discussion just on vacation with my mother and my sister last week. We went up to Block Island, and my sister was at the wine store and she said, “What do I buy?” She goes, “We’re going to be drinking hard all week.” I said, “You know what? There’s actually some really good wines that come in a box,” and my mother was like “Be still my heart! My sommelier daughter is saying this.” I said, “No, seriously.”
Gone are the days of Franzia and Almaden, those big five liters that our grandparents…
Bottom Line: The jug.
Dixon: Yeah, exactly.
Bottom Line: Dunkin’ Donuts in one hand and the jug of wine in the other.
Dixon: The jug in the other. I mean, while those wines still exist, for under $30 for a box-which generally is four bottles of wine and a bottle costs $5 to $8-you can find something really delicious. I have a friend that’s really hot on New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, and her budget was starting to creep up and creep up and creep up.
The nice thing about the bag-in-the-box wines is that it keeps the wine fresh. The biggest trouble with wine is once you’ve opened it, oxygen gets into the bottle and you have to drink it within the next two days. That can be really frustrating, especially for me. I travel a lot, I’m very rarely home two nights in a row. So I feel so wasteful living by myself and then having three-quarters of a bottle of wine left that a week later, I go, “Oh shoot, I really liked that wine and I just wasted all of it because I didn’t drink it!”
Now this gives you the opportunity to have a glass when you want to and not have to worry about the waste. Bag-in-a-box is hermetically sealed, so you don’t have to worry about air getting in. It’s a great alternative.
Bottom Line: Is bag-in-the-box good for all types of wine…or is it better for certain types than others.
Dixon: There’s really no difference. There’s actually great Bordeaux that are now coming. I never thought I would see this, but Bordeaux-when you go to France and you go to the Burgundy region, a lot of times they have Macon-Villages Chardonnay in a bag-in-a-box, and you go, “Oh my gosh!” But that’s what they’re drinking for everyday.
Because for them, wine is just part of a meal, and so having it in a sealed container is fantastic because then you’re not obligated to drink the whole bottle—which, don’t get me wrong, is fun to do, but we don’t always want to do that.
Bottom Line: I can just imagine the dinner party that you show up to, when it’s a big dinner party and you’re asked to bring the wine.
Dixon: “I’m here!”
Bottom Line: You bring the boxes of wine.
Dixon: Right. “I’m here…I brought the wine!”
Bottom Line: We’re going to start a whole new trend.
Dixon: Oh, absolutely.
Bottom Line: Bag-in-the-box wine.
