Boxed Wines and Screw tops, Oh My!

I am finally ready to try wine in the box. To come clean, I've always thought of wine in a box as totally trailer park -- the stuff that your red-nosed aunt pours into a pink tumbler with ice cubes before parking it in front of Days of Our Lives. Well, my friend Anne, who has Gucci good taste, says Joel Gott in a box is pretty darn good. So I have decided to take her word and investigate further. The wine, a joint production of Joel Gott and a couple of buddies, is called Three Thieves (A brassy enough name) and it comes in a 1-literTetra box....you know those soft sided boxes they use for chicken broth and your kids' juice boxes. MSNBC reports that these wine boxes have been big in Europe for years. Vive La France! Anyway, Three Thieves got a lot of press when the company introduced its screw cap jug wines in 2004. I never bought any, largely because I never saw it at the store, though now I picture myself slugging it down while attempting some dance of my Celtic roots.The 2002 Napa Valley Cabernet jug was priced pretty fine at $11 a liter. Wine Spectator gave it an 87 out of 100 points, too, not bad for a jug.
Wine Spectator says the Bandit Tetra box quality is a couple notches below the jug.
The Tetra pack comes in California Merlot, a Cabernet Sauvignon and a Sangiovese. I am going to hunt down a few Tetra packs this week to review on the blog soon. Unfortunately, it has rained constantly here in SF so there will be no picnic with the Tetra boxes, though I promise to have an open mind and to not drink it from a Dixie Cup.

February 02, 2006

Boxed Wines and Screw tops, Oh My!