NOTE: This is a reprint of an article I wrote for the venerable Local Buzz - an excellent newspaper that is finally ridding itself of its corporeal form and ascending to internet nirvana. Good luck Buzz.
Here’s the thing: boxes might be the most sensible way to serve wine. How many of you have that bottle of Italian red wine that you opened five days ago sitting next to your toaster? Unlike that bottle, box wine (with some notable exceptions) will not go bad. It’s like space wine, packaged in a collapsing plastic bag that keeps out the air. No, it is not necessarily romantic, but then neither is sitting in your sweats watching American Idol. WHICH IS TO SAY: pair like with like.
And unlike wine bottle labels, box wine design begs to look modern and almost cheap. There might be a way to class up a cardboard box holding a plastic bag of wine, but I don’t really see the need. Here are four examples that W.A.G. and I recently opened (or tapped) with friends.
WINE BLOCK
Producer: Wine Block
Region: Santa Rosa, CA
Grape: Cabernet Sauvignon
The label: You can almost hear the marketing team bouncing ideas around for this one: “Hey guys, what’s another word for Box?” The nifty typography, the gauzy squares of color, the perfect cube shape – this is as close to conceptual box wine as you can get. It sort of validates one’s hipness, this does, combining cheap irony with the obvious I-went-to-art-school-and-own-an-Apple-laptop graphic design. AND: as a friend pointed out while drinking the Block, when finished, this doubles nicely as a Kleenex box.
This box is an example of: the hipster box wine. It actually might be the sole example of this particular style.
Wine/Box Connection Rating: 8 out of 10 – my goodness, if a wine can actually taste like a cube, this one is it.
FRENCH RABBIT:
Producer: René Clément
Region: France – Vin de Pays d’Oc
Grapes: Pinot Noir
The label: Who cares about the rabbit? Look at that shape! It’s a hexagon! Even though one friend commented that this box looked almost exactly like an energy/malt liquor beverage currently on the market, I think this box evokes something traditional and European enough to actually be classy. It manages to be box wine without referencing what your parents drank in the 70s; and that is huge.
This label is an example of: the Classy box; or, this-is-how-we-buy-wine-in-Italy-you-stuffy-Americans box
Wine/Box Connection Rating: 7 out of 10 – The orange is distracting, but other than that, this light, acidic wine somehow made the packaging make even more sense.
THREE THIEVES BANDIT
Producer: Rebel Wine
Region: Grapes for CA, but boxed up in OR
Grape: Merlot
The label: Oh bandit. Maybe other countries package wine this way, but the resemblance to either soymilk or a Minute Maid juice box just throws me off. (That being said: how rad would it be if this wine came with a plastic bendy straw glued to the back? OR OHMIGOSH EVEN BETTER: If it actually came as a six-pack of individual serving boxes, each with a straw glued to the back! Okay. I’m going to write them. That’s a fabulous idea.) Also, it looks as if the graphic designer was working in Print Shop in 1991.
This label is an example of: I don’t know. This is just a train wreck. And one thing you can’t see, but which is written on the side and which is even worse than it sounds: a fake personal ad written from the perspective of the wine.
Wine/Box Connection Rating: 8 out of 10 – wine also train wreck. (One friend commented on its ‘gaggy finish’).
CORBETT CANYON
Producer: Corbett Canyon
Region: Ripon, CA
Grapes: The Zinfandel grape subjected to some shadowy wine-making ritual
The label: From the pink color to the picture of a bottle on the side, this is the platonic ideal of box wine. This is what you’re parents drank in the 70s, god bless ‘em. Though I like really nothing about this box, or perhaps because I like nothing about it, I love it wholeheartedly. This box contains the equivalent of four bottles of wine – four bottles – and it cost $9. Up near the top, it reads in wavy text: “Enjoy a Glass a Day” as if it were an advertisement for tomato juice. And though you can’t see it in this picture, you should go buy this box of wine just to see the small photo of the winemaker on the side – mustachioed, smirking, shirt unbuttoned. It fits with the 70s swinging thing so well you wonder if ol’ Corbett Canyon is the work of geniuses.
This label is an example of: The Classic Box – blurry photos of wine bottles, bad pink wine, no indication of irony.
Wine/Label Connection Meter: 10 out of 10 – Perfect! Perfect! Oh, this stuff is horrible: horrible like a fox.