Boxed Wine

In yesterday's Gazette there was an article on boxed wines. I know what you're thinking, boxed wine, yuck! We drink the cheapest of boxed wine, Franzia. My wife uses it to help her fall asleep at night and I drink the red to help my blood pressure. Now available for half the price of bottled wine, you can get premium wines in a box. And the taste doesn't linger, so you only have to have a glass whenever you want and don't have to worry about that $20 bottle going to waste.

Mark Norris, a Colorado Springs bicycle shop owner, couldn’t wait to get his hands on a brand called X Box, filled with a premium California-made wine that had been available only in bottles.

"I had tried X Wine cabernet sauvignon and thought it was delicious — no edges or harshness," he said. "I was paying $18 a bottle for it."

He found out that Vintages Wine & Spirits downtown was going to carry 3-liter boxes of X Wine, the equivalent of four 750-milliliter bottles, for $36. He got his first two boxes of X Box on April 1 — no fooling.

"I had a glass of wine from the box every day for four days," he said, "and every one was as good as the last."

"There’s no downside to box wines. They cost less money, have the same great wine, and they don’t oxidate and change flavor."

Boxed wines, not just cheap swill anymore.