Survivors guide to buying Box Wine

Recently I returned two boxes of Hardy's wine to the Liquor store because they went bad quickly or were bad when I opened them. Box wines usually seem to last for weeks after I break the seal, but this was the first time I have ever been met with bad wine - either from a bottle or a box.

At the store I asked about why this was happening. The sales person didn't seem to know, but he checked the remaining boxes on the shelf and they were all a year old. He removed them all. So I looked at all the other box wines in the store - most of them were around a year old and some had dust on them. Were they all bad then?

So I did some research on the internet and here is what I found.

First of all, it can be difficult to get real facts about wine - it is sold on the basis of snob appeal and there is a lot of disinformation out there put out by biased sources intent on preserving their markets. Wine is sold in a box or a bottle or a "Tetrapak".

The Bottle

The bottle can have a natural or plastic cork or a screw top. The screw top sounds like it is actually superior to a cork and a plastic cork may be better than a natural one. Although a natural cork is the least practical, it has immense snob appeal and many winerys won't change for fear of losing business or looking cheap. After all, Gallo has has a screw cap for
years. The biggest problem with corks is that the seal is vulnerable to being breached due to temperature and pressure changes during storage and shipping. Keeping oxygen out of the wine is critical since it starts breaking down rapidly once this happens. A properly sealed bottle maintains a hermetic seal that can prevent oxygen from reaching the wine almost indefinitely. Once opened, a bottle of wine will start to degrade and each time you pour a glass over succeeding days or a week will begin to taste more or less like vinegar.

The Box

The box is a plastic bladder housed in a cardboard box. The wine is aged before it is packaged. However, plastic is permeable to oxygen so once the wine is packaged, it slowly begins to decay letting minute amounts of oxygen through the plastic membrane over the preceding months it is stored. Therefore, it is important to purchase box wine as early as possible to ensure the freshest wine. Once you break the seal on the box, it is much less critical how quickly you drink it up because the plastic bladder shrinks with the wine content preventing any new air to be introduced into the product. If you bought a fresh box, it should stay that way for weeks after you open it unlike any bottle you pop open. Boxes are more economical to purchase because they weigh less and are cheaper to ship as well as allowing the consumer to purchase more bulk.

TIP: When it seems you have tapped your last glass from a box wine, remove the bag from the box and cut off a corner so you can pour out any remaining wine. Often there can be an extra glass full that is caught inside that won't come out of the spigot.

The Tetrapak

The Tetrapak is made out of paper and a waxy coating. You know this more commonly as a "juice box". The advantages over a glass bottle is that it is lighter, unbreakable and recyclable. This packaging is more common in Europe. Like the bottle, you must drink up. I haven't seen any of these at the store around here to date, but then in Minnesota, we are just waking up to the idea of buying our liquor in the grocery store.

Transportation and Storage

Once wine leaves the winery, it has to be transported and stored in a stable environment. Wine is alive and is very sensitive to changes and excesses in temperature, pressure and humidity. Heat can "cook" the wine, changes in temperature and pressure and humidity can break seals allowing oxygen through. Ultraviolet light can damage it as well.

If the wine from your local store has not been handled and stored properly, you are buying damaged goods. It may be a bit off and may be hard to tell or it can be noticeably bad. This is particularly true with the box wines since they may tend to be the cheaper varieties and may be transported by less experienced or conscientious haulers. Some box wines have a package date, but others have a "best before" date so you don't know really how old they are.