Best boxed wines | Château du Chatelard, Black Box, Bota Box

It lasts a long time once opened. Industry professionals have a more precise term for boxed wine: “bag-in-Box”. Most boxed wines actually come in a plastic sleeve with a polyester outer layer. The bag is vacuum filled, so there is no air inside. This bag shrinks when you pour wine through the spout, which keeps wine fresh much longer than bottled wine, which of course stays the same size no matter how much wine you have drunk from it. “Most 3 liter cans will stay good for up to six weeks after opening,” says Chris Leon, owner of the Brooklyn, NY wine store. Leon & Son. A box is the perfect option for someone who just wants some wine here and there, he says. “I even know wine professionals who will keep a box in the fridge when they just want a quick drink. ”

This only applies to bag-in-box wines, which you pour from via a spout, however. Bandit, who makes the pinot grigio we tried, sells their wine in Tetra Paks, a long-life, multi-layered packaging reminiscent of plant milks (many of which are packaged in Tetra Paks). Like a bottle of wine, the air replaces the wine as the juice is poured. So, although Tetra Pak wines keep well before opening, they should be consumed within a few days of breaking the seal.

It’s cheap. A box is economical, which makes it a great choice for the holidays – you can get some really good stuff without spending an arm and a leg if you’re hosting a ton of people. Unfortunately, many wine drinkers have learned to equate price with quality. “I think what detracts from people’s perception of canned wine is that it can be really cheap,” says Leon. An ounce can cost half as much as what you would get in a glass bottle, and it can still be fine wine, he says.

This is in part because glass is more expensive, he says. It’s also more difficult to ship: glass is much heavier than plastic and cardboard, and takes up more space than a box, which can be stacked without any space between packages.

It’s more ecological. The lighter weight and stacking of boxed wine makes it much heavier durable to transport because you can fit more on a single truck or ship, and it is less of a burden on the vehicle. But even apart from the element of transport, boxed wine has a lighter environmental footprint than glass wine.

A 2018 life cycle analysis by the University of California, Los Angeles, looked at the most popular forms of wine conditioning and rated them against three criteria: how much energy it consumes, how much its lifespan contributes to global warming, and how much it contributes to acidification of air, water and soil. He found the drums to be the most durable (although few of us go through this lots of wine in our own homes) and boxed wines, despite the plastic bag inside, came right after. Note that this does not mean that boxed wine is positive For the environment; it’s not as bad as glass. Tetra Paks are light and easy to ship, but they are extremely difficult to recycle, according to a 2021 review of the literature available at how wine packaging affects wine flavor.