When we were in college — or fresh out and partying in someone’s dingy starter apartment — the beverage table at most get-togethers always beheld a box or two of wine. Lukewarm and hardly inviting, that cheap rose or pinot grigio would hit the spot and got us drunk, but it wasn’t exactly sophisticated. Once we made enough money to graduate to “real” wine, we spent an extra $7 and upgraded to the “good stuff” in bottles and never looked back.
But is boxed wine inherently inferior to bottled wine? Is there any real difference in quality or taste? Or did we just fall for an elitist myth?
“Good wine can be found in any package anywhere. It just comes down to somebody who wants to put good wine in there,” Doug Frost, master sommelier and co-founder of Echoland Winery told us, Raj Punjabi and Noah Michelson, hosts of HuffPost’s “Am I Doing It Wrong?” podcast.
Listen to the full podcast here to learn lots of wine secrets and hacks:
“Many times the boxed wines that we have in the U .S. are pretty good wines,” Frost revealed. “But you can go to places like Australia where a lot of their boxed wines are super serious. I mean, they’re really, really good wines. Canned wine is the same way.”
Mind blown.
Canned wine always felt a little ridiculous to us — as if beer needed a bougie compatriot — but Frost, who is on a mission to demolish the pretension that can scare people off from learning more about wine, gave it to us straight: Good wine simply means that it was made from high quality ingredients, and it can come in whichever package feels right to the winemaker.
The important thing to consider, however, is how long you want the wine to stay fresh.
“The only difference really between a bottle and a can — and a bottle and a box — is those wines don’t live as long,” Frost said. “They start to fade when they’re in a can [or a box]. So you don’t want to hang on to it for a year or two. You want to drink it in the next three to six months.”
Bottles, he told us, have been used by winemakers for centuries because they store wine in a way that keeps it stable and delicious for decades.
However, boxed wine does have a leg up on bottled wine once you’ve started drinking it. A bottle of wine, if stored correctly, will typically start to lose its freshness a week after it’s been opened, whereas boxed wine that’s been opened can stay good in its package for up to a month or even six weeks.
Boxed wine can also be easier to transport and share (no need for a special tool to open it!), so it’s an excellent option for picnics and other on-the-go events. Best of all, because boxed wine’s packaging is cheaper to produce, its price tag is lower, but the quality can be just as good as the stuff that comes in a bottle.
Busting this myth about boxed wine feels like we’ve been given a new lease on imbibing, and we hope you’ll consider picking up some for your next party. However, we recommend you don’t fully flashback to college by serving it in red solo cups. During our chat, Frost explained why drinking wine out of stemware really does offer the optimal tasting experience, why letting wine breathe really can be a game changer, and demystified so much more about the delicious beverage.
Listen to the full episode above or wherever you get your podcasts.
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