Bag-in-Box and Logistics In the World of Wine

Britain's just-drinks.com looks at the logistics industry and the wine industry.

Like the market around it, the wine industry’s supply chain is evolving rapidly. David Skalli of the Paris and London-based Skalli & Rein Consulting Firm talks to just-drinks about the changes and the pressures they are bringing to bear on everyone from logistics companies to wine producers.

Just the Answer – David Skalli : Beverage News & Comment

And what role does alternative packaging play in the supply chain picture? Mr. Skalli says:

Wineries have to start thinking about the whole supply chain from the vineyard to the consumer. They have to use labels that will support high humidity and corks that won’t become dry in high temperatures during freight forwarding. Bag-in-box, screwcap and synthetic corks are sometimes a way for wineries to reduce that kind of risk. At the end of the day, customers buy a branded wine with a certificate of guarantee linked to it. If your wine is tainted it’s the winery that you’ll blame.

Just the Answer – David Skalli : Beverage News & Comment

I'm particularly interested in what Skalli had to say about what this all means for the small independent winery, and the strategies by which such an operation can remain viable in today's marketplace.

technorati tags: bag-in-box, boxed+wine, box+wine

Breathe Easy, Your Boxed Wine Can Breathe Easy Too

I stumbled on this old post and thread of comments about boxed wine, on Low Grade Panic, from January 2004. "Whiney" commented:

... but how do you let it breathe???????????????????

Now, I've heard that before many times, from other people's mouths, and, I must admit, in my own head. This excellent response to the question came from "Chef":

Young reds usually benefit from breathing but only if they have been decanted. Don't expect much "evolution" of bouquet and taste if you merely draw the cork an hour before dinner. But decanting really does help. The agitation and aeration of the pouring releases previously closed aromas and has an "opening" effect on the flavour. As a general rule, the younger the wine the more breathing it needs.

And then "Wineaux" had this comment to add:

Yeah...sometimes, if a young wine is really weird tasting, I'll pour it into 2 glass pitchers and pour it violently back and forth between the 2 pitchers. Suprisingly effective for changing the taste...sometimes even for the better!

COOL!!! All this started to clear up some questions for me, so I dug deeper. I found a great article on About.com, entitled Tips for Letting Your Wine Breathe, :

How to Let Your Wine Breathe
Some erroneously believe that merely uncorking a bottle of wine and allowing it to sit for a bit is all it takes to aerate. This method is futile, as there is simply not enough room (read: surface area) at the top of the bottle to permit adequate amounts of air to make contact with the wine. So what's a Wine Lover to do? You have two options: Decanter or Wine Glass
Decanter - use a decanter,a flower vase, an orange juice pitcher, whatever - any large liquid container with a wide opening at the top to pour your bottle of wine into. The increased surface area is the key to allowing more air to make contact with your wine. Keep this in mind while setting up proper "breathing" techniques for your favorite wine.
The Wine Glass - Pour your wine into wine glasses and let it aerate in situ. This is certainly the low-maintenance method and typically works quite well. Just be sure to keep the glass away from the kitchen commotion, while it breathes in peace. * Tip, for pouring wine into glasses make sure that you pour into the center of the glass with a good 10-12 inches of "fall" from bottle to glass to allow for further aeration during the actual pour.
In general, the Aeration Rule of Thumb: the more tannins a wine has the more time it will need to aerate. Lighter-bodied red wines (Pinot Noir for example)that have lower tannin levels, will need little if any time to breathe.

Letting Wine Breathe

Great advice! I particularly like the tip on 10-12 inches of "fall" into the glass; very easy to do from a box!

technorati tags: box, boxed, cask, wine, aeration, aerate, breathe, decant, decanter

From Dr Vino to Jorge

Today Dr. Vino's wine blog posted an open letter to Jorge Ordonez:

Dear Jorge Ordonez, importer of wine from Spain, Bring us a good bag-in-a-box. Robert Parker may have just sung your praises in his most recent newsletter. He may have lauded some of your top wines such as El Nido with 97 points. But you have many great value wines ranging from Tres Picos, to Naia, to Juan Gil. Borsao is great juice for $6 a bottle. You need to put it--or something like it--in a bag in a box. There's certainly no lack of old vine grenache in Spain that rolls in at value pricing. Tap that wine glut. Boxed wine sales are the fastest segment with 204 percent growth over the past three years according to this story in August's Wine Business Monthly. They eliminate the need for glass so can make a claim to being better for the environment. And they are certainly more convenient for consumers who just want to squeeze off a glass or two every night for a couple of weeks. While in France this summer, Mrs. Vino and I -- and practically anyone who walked within 100 yards of the fridge for that matter -- enjoyed glasses of wine from a 5L box of rose that we bought for 12 euros.

Dr. Vino's wine blog: An open letter to Jorge

HERE, HERE! The amount and variety of great wine available in bag-in-box in Europe is staggering. It's true, the growth of the 3L segment has taken a great leap in the last year, and we are seeing some excellent California wines, Pacific Northwest wines, and Australian wines in boxes, but scant availability from the Continent. There is still an amazing bias against the box, more prevailing among those who have not travelled overseas.

Dr. Vino, I hope Jorge gets your message!

technorati tags: boxed+wine, box+wine, wine+import, wine+Spain

Box Wine As Baseline

Interesting post on Mollishka blog about a wine tasting class:

The bulk of the class was dedicated to "component tasting." Did you ever do that thing in elementary school where you have to make a map of your tongue based on dipping cuetips into sugar water and salt water and bitter water and swabbing it in your mouth? It was like that, but with wine and no little kids going, ewwwwww. We were given a simple base wine (Almaden Mountain Chablis, a white box wine) which had been enhanced with six different flavors. The components were acidity (citric acid), sugar (sucrose), sweetness (glycerine), tannin (... grape tannin), oak (soaked oak chips in the wine), and simulated oxidation (adding dry Fino sherry). Most of the tastes were fairly subtle, but the tannin and the oak were quite strong. Apparently, by the way, if a wine smells like sherry (and thus not like "wine"), it is probably due to an overabundance of acetaldehyde, and means the wine has "gone bad."

{mollishka's title goes here}: AstroVino #1: Intro and Component Tasting

So the Chablis was the starting point for training the nose to identify the six "tweaks". I've heard about this, but have never done it. Fascinating; I'd like to find a class like that!

technorati tags: box+wine, boxed+wine, wine+tasting, Almaden+Chablis

Time Magazine Discovers the Box!

This week's edition of Time Magazine includes an article about alternative wine packaging. In Look, Ma, No Cork! Sharon Kapnick considers alternatives to corked bottles, including screw caps, cans, and juice boxes, and has this to say about bag-in-box:

Bag-in-the-box containers can keep wines fresh for four to six weeks after they're opened, thanks to the vacuum-sealed bag inside that collapses as the wine is consumed, making it difficult for oxygen to get in and spoil what's left. Although box wines often come in 3-L sizes, equivalent to four bottles of wine, more convenient 1.5-L boxes are becoming available.

TIME.com: Look, Ma, No Cork! -- Oct. 2, 2006 -- Page 1

The article concedes that bag-in-box has a certain advantage over the "juice box":

Juice box--style cartons don't offer that extra shelf life once opened, but they are more eco-friendly than bottles.

Thanks Sharon Kapnick and Time Magazine

technorati tags: bag-in-box, boxed+wine, box+wine, bag+in+box

Wine of the Week ... IN A BOX!

From the Baltimore Sun, Michael Dresser's Wine of the Week last Wednesday featured a French wine available in a bag-in-box package.

The 2003 Cuvee de Pena, Vin de Pays Pyrenees Orientales ($10) is a medium-bodied red wine from the south of France. It's an uncomplicated delight that bursts with bright flavors of blueberry, cherries, earth and herbs. It's an outstanding wine for current drinking. It's also available in bag-in-a-box format - an especially good value.

Winston-Salem Journal | Wine of the Week: 2003 Cuvee de Pena

Sounds yummy! Thanks Michael Dresser for bringing this find to our attention. Nice to see a recommendation of a really nice wine in a box getting out to readers .

technorati tags: boxed+wine, cuvee+de+pena, box+wine

Featured Boxed Wine - Peter Vella White Grenache

Perhaps it's unfair to Peter Vella Wines to start here. I do buy Peter Vella wines for cooking, and I have been known to slurp a little while preparing dinner, and some are not that bad. I'm sure there are people who love White Grenache, but I am not one. As a rule however, I do not present my own opinions here. Perhaps I can do better by Peter Vella Wines in the future, but today, this is what I put before you.

First, the description from the Peter Vella website:

The delicate salmon hue of Peter Vella® White Grenache comes from leaving the juice on its skins for just the right amount of time. Our White Grenache has a lighter body with enticing flavors of fresh, red berry fruit. The clean, crisp finish makes this wine a real winner on hot summer days.

Peter Vella - Our Wines

Now, the only review I have ever seen in the press. In December 2003, Carol Emert of the San Francisco Chronicle tasted 31 boxed wines, including five in 5-liter packaging.

The traditional, 5-liter box wines ranged from surprisingly good to shockingly bad. ... The worst was Peter Vella's white Grenache, a wine that I will not taste again without hazard pay. My tasting notes say it best: "Ick. Skunky odor with port underneath. Cat food and gasoline. Cloying flavors. Oooooh, icky cat food finish. I MUST BRUSH."

The San Francisco Chronicle

Thank you Carol Emert, for all your many excellent boxed wine reviews. Readers, you have been warned. There is nothing more I can add.

Technorati Profile

technorati tags: boxed wine, wine review, peter vella, white grenache