Tom Simoneau:  The most wild thing happened to me last week.  I was introduced to a wine that is not in a bottle.  It’s in a box, and it’s called the Black Box Wine. 

Pat Thurston:  It’s a beautiful box.

Tom Simoneau:  Yeah, and it’s the size -- a little bit bigger than a half gallon of milk.  It’s got a vertical label on it.  It has three liters of wine inside of this box.  So that means it has the equivalent of four bottles of wine in a completely recyclable box.  Okay?  So when you pop the little entryway to get into the spout, you get the spout and the spout will be sitting on the edge of your refrigerator.  And you take your glass, and, . . . there it is!  Great chardonnay and it’s around five bucks a bottle.  It stays sealed, there’s no air – the bag deflates as the wine comes out so there is no oxygen ruining the wine.  It can stay two, three, four weeks in the bag in the box inside the refrigerator.

Pat Thurston:  Now what are the advantages of something like that?  You can drink the whole bottle of wine, or three liters in this case of wine.  What else is advantageous about something like this?  It seems to me that one of things I learned about from you guys, before, when we were talking about merlots before, was the cork thing, where it gets stinky wine.  What’s that called?

Tom Simoneau:  There’s no chance of TCH corked taint, corked wines, that will spoil the wine, there’s no chance.  A lot of people call me or send me emails and say, "Gee, Tom, I don’t drink a whole bottle a night," or, "My wife likes white and I like red, what do we do?"  And I say, "well, put the cork back on it, put in the refrigerator."  It’s gonna to oxidize over a few days but if you slow the molecules moving around in that bottle, it won’t oxidize as quickly.  With this boxed wine, there is no air.  And there’s no glass, you don’t have to recycle four glass bottles! 

Pat Thurston:  It doesn’t take up nearly as much space.

Tom Simoneau:  No.  This is paper, and plastic, and you can recycle it.  The wine is very good  . . . This is premium wine from Napa Valley.  Chardonnay that -- well you’ve got some right there.

Carol Batchelor:  I just took a taste.  Then I took another taste in order to have the actual taste, and man, this is great, great chardonnay.

Tom Simoneau:  And the price!  To be honest with you, when people hear,"I’ve got this boxed wine.  Can I come in and show you so you can sell it in your store?"  People go, "Yeah, right.  Boxed wine?  No, we sell upscale wine here."  Well, this is upscale wine in a box.  And for years they’ve been selling wine like this in Australia.  So this is not a really a new concept in the world of wine.  It happens to be a new concept for Americans. 

Carol Batchelor:  Am I tasting a little butter?

Tom Simoneau:  Yeah.  And you’re tasting some vanilla, just a little bit.  There’s a little bit of oak to this, not a lot.  So those people that don’t really like big oaky fat chardonnays, you’re not having a lot of oak in front of the fruit.  There’s a lot of nice fruit here.  There’s a little bit of tropical fruit, a little bit of citrus.  So this is a nice sipper.  When you come home from work, you know, you want to relax, and you go, well I could go to the wine cellar and open some wine up, or, you’ve got your little Black Box wine sitting right in the fridge.  You just push a little button and you got a glass!