actually, premium box wine has been popular in europe for years, and is taking off in the US. (premium box wine that is, not franzia)

i have spent over $100 on a wine gadget (a bottle opener) and yet i ocassionaly drink from the box as well. this little cooler might not be so bad.

Dude, people who spend that kind of money on wine gadgets don't drink boxed wine.

Hmmmm, I suppose you're right, but if I saw this in person and had cash to blow there's a decent chance I'd walk away with it.

I'm down with boxed wine, and that's a damn sexy box box.

No shit. Drinking milk out of the carton looks stupid too.

OTOH, pour it into a glass and you're fine (O.K. A "Flintstones" glass maybe less so).

Seriously, what's with all the illogical wine snobbery? Glass is inert, as is mylar in contact with wine. Cork is not inert so it can rot or harbor fungus, plust it is getting rare to fine vint-quality cork. Plastic screw-caps or similar are inert in contact with wine. Most glass is UV transparent while mylar bags are opaque to UV. Ever notice how cellars are usually not bright?

As for aging. Aging in wine is cause by oxygen gradually seeping into the container. In the barrel (wooden) this happens obviously, in the bottle it passes the cork. Well guess what, mylar is semi-permiable to oxygen. This means wine will age in bag-wines, in fact it can age faster and with more stability because corks are unpredictable.

Don't hold me to this but I have had a couple of people tell me now that there is quality boxed wine. Really, that sort of makes sense since the difference comes down to what you put in it and whether you plan on aging a bottle (aging a box is probably not a great idea). So, maybe there are folks drinking Brunello from a box?

(WINE box.)

This past weekend the Wall St Journal's weekend edition wine column was on box wines. The reviewers came away surprised by some the results.

They weren't totally blown away, but found several of the offerings, tasted over a couple of weeks to be acceptable.

I, on the other hand, have the tastebuds of a swine and could care less about boxes or bottles. Though empty winebottles are a hell of a lot of fun to blast out of the air with a 12 gauge shotgun.

I'd like to see a wine taste-test (ala 20/20's Vodka taste test) to see if people can really tell the difference between a good box wine and a bottle of wine. I bet they can't.

Wait, hold on. Everyones guilty of drinking from a box of wine at one point or another AND enjoying it. I'm not saying its the tastiest, but clearly, when drinking boxed wine, taste is not the goal of the day/night

check out: [www.slate.com] . Slate's wine columnist reviews half a dozen jug and box wine (and explains their sudden prominence) and mostly likes what he's tasting. I'd have tried them myself but haven't found any of the ones he mentioned here in NYC, though I haven't been looking that hard.

I used to live in france, and we'd drive over to wineries and buy boxed wine, as well as bring our own giant plastic jugs to have the winery fill for us (which we then bottled ourselves when we got home). Nothing wrong with a boxed wine, so long as it's a good boxed wine - it's the type you drink immediately rather than store, is all.

It's a waste of perfectly good potential raisins is what it is.

(Please please please don't bother. I know they are different grapes, I was making humor, ar ar.)

Well actually boxed wine and screw tops will be the next big thing because they keep the wine at its freshest. Of course everyone likes getting the wait staff to open the cork but lets be honest, thats the best way for your wine to go bad...the wine is corked, pieces of cork get into the wine, the wine goes bad...it may not be the most extravagant way to serve but if you are really picky...just decant your reds and plug your whites.

The people that will extol the benefits of mylar for wine storage are the same ones that would have argued in favor of the Rio Karma against the ipod. There are some in every crowd and (perhaps unfortunately) it always falls on deaf ears.

DestroyerMTL: The peple who decry mylar w/o backing it up with anything more than an off-topic comparison freshly pulled from their ass with no actual backing or demonstration of an understanding of the principles on vintivulture are retards.

Now you can demonstrate how you're not a retard by actually using knowlege to back up your opinion, or you can just be a retard.

"It's bad because it's non-traditional or new!" <----that's your logic train, right there.

@strider_mt2k

Your comments before being inducted into the coveted Gizmodo Commentators HoF we're more snappy, and to the point. I really hope you get that old flame back, buddy.

Best Regards,

A Fan

---------

Now to what really matters. I'm not against new things in the world of wine, so long as it does not affect the end result. Sure, the traditionalism of wine makes it kind of romantic. Who would like to remember that time they got that bottle with a moldy cork? No one! I echo goldenthorn's though that, "Nothing wrong with a boxed wine, so long as it's a good boxed wine - it's the type you drink immediately rather than store, is all."

I think it would make a cool PC case.

mopar_man should look at the the blind tasting conducted on July 13, 2006 by the Society of Wine Educators at their annual meeting in Eugene, OR. The tasting panel compared the exact same wine in glass bottles with corks, and in 3L boxes; the box won by a margin of about 2 to 1. They also compared another wine in glass bottles with corks, and in glass bottles with screw caps, and the screw cap wine was slightly preferred. I believe the reason for the difference is the effect of plastic on "stripping" even tiny amounts of TCA (cork taint) from wine.