Inside the box
Premium wine is no longer strictly a bottled affair
 Good From The Box? Wine from a box is nothing new but ... good wine from a box? Now that's different. It not may not be chic, but thanks to companies like Black Box Wines, the wine gets a makeover. |
But a new breed of boxed wine is making an entrance to store shelves. And the stuff inside isn't strawberry-flavored pink wine or sweet, bland plonk.
Three companies now have upscale bag-in-box wines, 3 liters and ranging from $10 to $25. First to enter the market was Black Box Wines of Walnut Creek.
In January the company introduced a 2001 Napa Valley Chardonnay in a 3-liter package at about $25, equivalent to $6.25 for a 750-milliliter bottle. A vintage-dated Merlot will be out soon.
The Chardonnay was made from a blend of lots bought in the bulk market but entirely from Napa Valley grapes.
Black Box president Ryan Sproule says the key to his packaging is that the bladder inside the box, made of triple-layer plastic, keeps the wine fresh indefinitely. Thus the wine will keep in a refrigerator for weeks.
"The bladder collapses," he says, so no air can get inside, and the wine remains unaffected by oxygen to the last drop."
Still, box-wine producers have a huge stigma to overcome. Tradition says fine wine comes in a cork-sealed bottle. Consumers remain wary about screw caps and synthetic corks, much less boxes.
But perceptions change over time, and nothing works like a product that succeeds in the marketplace. One of boxed wines' biggest supporters is Ben Pearson of Bottle Barn in Santa Rosa, in the heart of Sonoma County Wine Country. He has reordered the Black Box Chardonnay four times.
"By far the biggest hurdle was just getting people to accept the fact that it actually has four bottles in that small a box," says Pearson. "But what has helped a lot is the fact that it has a Napa pedigree. Also, we did give it a pretty prime piece of real estate (in the store), with high visibility."
He adds that the wine shows nice character and is a great value at his retail price of $19.
Draeger's stores in Los Altos and San Mateo also carry the Black Box wine.
"It's doing pretty well, even though it started out a little bit slow," says wine buyer Marlene Bizjak. "I don't think people knew what it was all about. But I like the wine and I endorsed it." Draeger's sells the box for $23.
"It's for a person who would open a bottle of wine and might not finish it, " Bizjak says. "Inside the box, the wine stays good for quite a while."
The huge Australian firm BRL Hardy is making a substantial push into the fine-wine box market in America with a brand called Hardy's Stamp, featuring a 2002 Chardonnay, a 2001 Merlot and a 2001 Shiraz, all from southeast Australia.
At $16 a box, the consumer ends up paying the equivalent of $4 per 750ml bottle.
For those who'd like to try the wines in smaller packages, Hardy's offers the same wines in standard 750ml bottles for about $6, and in 1.5-liter bottles for $11.
WINE IS THE SAME
"We made sure to use the same tanks and the same blends," says David Hayman,who heads the Hardy's Stamp collection in the United States. The wines are now available at Bay Area stores."What the (box) does is offer the consumer a packaging saving," Hayman says.
"Glass is such a large financial commitment. So are corks, capsules and labels."
Bottles, corks, capsules, labels and other packaging items run between $1 and $3 per bottle; Sproule estimates that the cost of producing wine in a box is closer to 70 cents per package.
Just eight weeks ago the San Francisco-based Wine Group quietly introduced its upscale Corbett Canyon brand in what it's calling the Premium Wine Cask. "Cask" is the Australian term for a bag-in-box product. Corbett Canyon's boxed Chardonnay, Merlot and White Zinfandel contain wines identical to those in 750ml and 1.5-liter bottles.
BRISK SALES
Constellation initially brought 40,000 cases of Hardy's Stamp into the United States, starting on the East Coast. Sales were brisk, Hayman says. By the time the casks hit the West Coast in early April, the company knew it would need at least another 20,000 cases, he says."We think the consumer will see the difference," Hayman says about Hardy's Stamp. "It is dry and we are relying on fruit freshness, varietal characteristics and balance. That and the fact that once it's opened, the bag has a longer shelf life" than an opened bottle.
The Wine Group also is launching the Corbett Canyon cask in England, with French Colombard and Ruby Cabernet in the varietal mix.
Pearson of Bottle Barn was asked to predict the future of upscale wine in a box.
"That's really hard to say,"
he says. "Is it a fad that's going to go away or is it going to stick
as a permanent category? I don't think anyone can say. It's just too early."
Dan Berger is a freelance wine writer in Sonoma County. E-mail him at wine@sfchronicle.com