Nicky Demitry '26
Production Editor
Since assuming my role as production editor of the Law Weekly, I have found myself working on the paper late into some Monday nights, accompanied always by our steadfast Editor-in-Chief, Andrew Allard ’25, raging hopelessly against the uncaring and casual cruelty of InDesign. As a proud Greek-American law student, and a less proud ex-bartender, Monday nights mean several things: I should consume alcohol, it should be red wine (so that it cannot be Rumplemintz), and this is all supported by precedent since it’s “industry night.”[1]
Writing drunk and editing sober may work well for Hemingway, but it works notably less well for me. This means Monday night wine time must be confined to a chaste communion-wine-esque plastic cup, which means Andrew and I are not crushing anywhere near the entire contents of your typical wine bottle. And as we know, oxygen is the mortal enemy of wine, coffee, and Yale librarians.[2] Some will tell you that wine is fine for days (sometimes even weeks!) after it’s opened, and I cast no formal aspersions on these folks or their claims; I have consumed many a vinegar-forward bottle of Bordeaux at 2 a.m. after a busy night of service. Case in point.
The truth is, once opened, the clock is ticking on the lifespan of your bottle of wine. An additional truth is that there are a growing number of box wine supporters, with many an article defensively exhorting the merits of all things cardboard + wine. I’ll hit the major points briefly, but I’m going to then skip to some recommendations so you can perhaps dip your toes into the environmentally friendly and delicious cubical waters of boxed wine and decide for yourself if I’m out of my mind or not.[3]
The Upsides:
Green!
Boxed wine is more environmentally friendly, longer lasting, and more affordable than bottled wine of the same quality. In terms of environmental impact here in the US, we have a little problem with recycling—i.e., we don’t do it. In 2018, when China stopped accepting a myriad of solid waste types from the US and everyone else, we lost our ability to get rid of most of our recycling. Many recycling programs today are run at a local level, which largely amounts to taking residents’ recycling to the landfill.[4] Here in Charlottesville, your recycling is likely going to a landfill unless you personally take it over to the McIntyre Recycling Center.
While there is some back and forth about the plastic wine bags in boxes vs. wine bottles and the ins and outs of recycling the two, what it really comes down to is shipping. According to Dr. Richard Smart at the Porto Protocol, 68 percent of the carbon footprint of wine comes from wine packaging and transport, namely in the export of heavy 750 ml glass bottles. And aside from being cheaper and easier to ship, it’s cheaper and easier to store, too. Short of walking to your local vineyard to refill bottles like they do in France (hint hint VA wine makers!!), there’s nothing greener.
Fresh!
Aside from the environmental benefits, boxed wine stays good longer, full stop. If you want to come at me claiming you can taste the difference between wine that has been in a bottle vs a bag (stored appropriately) then find me at office hours because I don’t fucking believe you. If you are not actively trying to age a wine, boxed wine will keep your wine from oxidizing.
For an example, consider girl dinner. Sometimes after a long day at Ye Olde School of Law, I only possess the energy to come home, walk my dog, and settle in for a dinner of random cheeses, bar olives stolen from work, and a glass of wine. What I don’t want is for it to turn into 2 or 3 glasses of wine, because I’m twenty-eight, and I will have a headache tomorrow if I do that, dammit. Enter boxed wine. No longer will I worry about opening a nice bottle and getting through it before it starts tasting funky.
Affordable!
Saving on shipping and production means savings can be passed on to consumers. Now is the ideal time to be buying some delicious boxed wines, while prices are still low as the industry fights its resoundingly un-sexy reputation. Honestly, you’re getting the best bang for your buck in terms of boxed wine if you’re willing to drop a little cash. Spend $25 on a box of Bodegas Borsao "Viña Borgia" Garnacha (Campo de Borja, Spain), and you’re essentially getting the equivalent of $60 worth of wine in bottled form. You’re like, making money basically. It won’t necessarily be as easy to find as Bota or Bandit but like I said—cheaper shipping, and you’re making money.
The Downsides:
As I age like a fine wine (in a basement, untouched), I realize that more and more people in my social strata seem motivated by conspicuous consumption in the most Baudrillardian sense of the word. Maybe it’s just gone over my head before, maybe it’s because apparently my 1L section was known as “The Fed Soc Section.”[5] At any rate, for those of us focused on flexing on our peers in whatever form that may take, boxed wine does not play with the upper echelon money crowd. Its association with Franzia (put respect on the name tho) and other cheap industrial cooking wine types render it a dirty little secret at best. And decanting a box is way less sexy than decanting a dusty bottle of 1982 Châteauneuf-du-Pape, I’ll give you that.
A more practical downside is the commitment factor—one box of wine usually equals 3-4 bottles of the same wine. So if you end up not liking it, you’ve got way more than a bottle to offload. Additionally, there’s some sticker shock associated with boxed wine, especially the nicer ones. It’s way easier to get a consumer to spend $10-15 on a bottle of wine rather than $50 on a box, even if it’s considerably cheaper per liter at the same quality or better.
Recommendations:
La Vieille Ferme Red Wine Bag in a Box 3L (France)
The only thing I miss about living in Europe (other than the healthcare, lack of school shootings, higher quality food, metric system, walkable cities, sensible work-life balance, and lack of social stigma surrounding a cheeky breakfast cigarette) is the wine culture. The French really know what people want when it comes to an $8 bottle of wine.[6] La Vieille Ferme has one of my favorite still rosés of all time, and just overall produces great approachable and affordable wine. This boxed version is made with a blend of grapes (Carignan, Cinsault, Grenache, Syrah) to form a highly drinkable, light, low tannin table wine that smells like red fruit and spices. Drink it with anything. Drink it with anyone. Drink it in the shower. But not from the box. That would get soggy. I suppose I should add shower-drinking from the source as a downside.
La Petite Frog Picpoul de Pinet
Another French wine, this boxy baby is 100 percent Picpoul (or Piquepoul) which is a popular and traditional varietal of grapes native to the costières in the Mediterranean garrigue (or phrygana for my people) near the Etang de Thau—a coastal lagoon situated between the port of Sète and Marseillan. The traditional pairing is with shellfish and seafood (coastal wine and all that), but don’t be scared to serve this as an afternoon aperitif wine or honestly, with any fried or fatty foods, because its acidity will cut the richness. This wine is elegant, bright, and well-balanced, with strong citrus fruit notes, especially grapefruit. I feel like a lot of self-professed wannabe somms are not super familiar with Picpoul, so it’s fun to whip out at a party while pronouncing garrigue in the most overblown French accent possible. And then tell your impressed wine geek friends that it’s from a box??? And watch their faces transform with horror?? Literally so good—these are the moments that make life worth living.
“From the Tank” Vin Rouge
Yeah yeah yeah it’s more French wine. “Go back and change the name to French boxed wine recommendations, Nicky,” whatever. From the Tank is from Jenny and Francois Selections, a natural wine importer. This boxed wine was born out of the “old-school idea of going to the local winery with a big empty jug to fill up with easy-drinking juice, a tradition that stretches back for ages in France.”[7] Their site touts the carbon-efficient packaging and the fact that it produces the least waste—at a 55 percent lower carbon footprint in manufacture and transport and 85 percent less landfill waste compared to traditional glass bottles. This wine is a little more complicated than the others. It’s solar and Mediterranean, with smoky red fruit, violet, sweet herb, and a top note of baking chocolate. It’s deep garnet in the glass with shimmering highlights and the predictable cherry and berry flavors, but made more complex with mineral notes and velvety tannins. It has a surprisingly floral, herby finish, with a dash of black pepper.
And boy does writing about wines remind me of the “no wrong answers” scene from the movie Wine Country. Fun fact, at my first job working in fine dining, servers had a constantly running betting pool about who could make up the weirdest shit to tell tables about whatever bottle they had bought and not have them catch on and call a manager. My best work was saying a bottle of 2005 Domaine Dujac Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru Les Beaux Monts had a “supernatural, almost haunted quality” to it, and had bootstrap leather notes like the belt your dad beat you with as a kid (no manager called, 50 percent tip btw).[8] Just don’t forget, the polite way to say a wine smells like cat piss is notes of “gooseberries” and the polite way to say a wine smells like horse shit is “barnyard.” And don’t laugh at people picking up gasoline notes in a wine until you’ve had a really good Riesling.
Some closing thoughts:
I love traditions and I love rituals, and I equally love shredding anything people defend by saying, “But we’ve always done it like this!” We sure have, Generic Charlottesville Restaurant Owner/Bar Manager, but I’m also getting shitty overpriced glasses of oxidized wine half the time I’m at your bar, which is dumb. If your BTG menu and demographics assessments are so bad that you can’t get through a bottle fast enough, and your COGS are so bad that you can’t afford to toss it, then you of all people should be zeroing in on the option that solves both of those problems. If it’s a wine that is going to be consumed reasonably quickly, and isn’t meant for aging, why wouldn’t we turn to the more environmentally sustainable option that ensures a better drinking experience? There are plenty of high quality producers putting their wines into boxes now—Christophe Pacalet from Beaujolais is one, and stateside the folks at Tablas Creek (think California Rhone movement) have a stunning Patelin that is biodynamic and regenerative organic. I love being cynical about new marketing gimmicks in the food and bev industry, but I also love these shifts to more sustainable practices. We can contain multitudes! We can contradict ourselves! We are vast! We can have bottles and boxes of wine!
Now, are we going to solve climate change by drinking wine? Probably not. In fact, not to be depressing, but it seems unlikely that human behavior will change enough to avert serious climate damages. We love our stuff, we love to eat high on the food chain, we continue to get into wars, and we love the way we live: big houses, big cars, big law? Yet only a fraction of U.S. emissions are in our immediate control. So when industry, commerce, landfills, and transportation still comprise the dominant share of carbon emissions, do our personal consumption choices even matter? Maybe not. But it does feel far too easy and far too cowardly to use that information on climate change as a reason to shrug off accountability whilst we sip wine at cocktail parties and happy hours and discuss the most recent Atlantic article about our dying planet with our learned colleagues. Boxed wine is the wine of the people, baby, and if you wanna talk more about it (or fight me) you can find me Monday nights tipping the boxed wine, living the life I was meant to live.
If you’re interested in the boxed wine movement, check out Eric Asimov’s (yes, nephew of that Asimov!) N.Y. Times article “Thinking Inside the Box,” Tablas Creek Vineyard’s blog posts on their boxed wines, and (even though I share most industry folks’ hatred of bon appétit magazine) Sommelier André Hueston Mack’s video on trying 16 boxed wines.
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ncd8kt@virginia.edu
[1] Almost always Monday nights, the equivalent of the start of the weekend for restaurant workers, bars and restaurants will give drink specials to those who work in the “Service Industry.” And by service industry they only mean other bartenders, barbacks, servers, and back-of-house. It’s where you go to recycle the 100 percent tips left for you by other bartenders over the weekend. Arguably the best night to bartend in terms of cash if you have a high tolerance for the worst people in the world (which this audience, as law students surrounded by other law students, should at least be developing).
[2] Choke me https://www.rarebookhub.com/articles/2957.
[3] I am, but ideally for different reasons than my love of boxed wine.
[4] 99% Invisible, Episode 341: National Sword (February 12, 2019), https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/national-sword/.
[5] This is an obvious joke, because no one can Baudrillard like the nouveau riche petit bourgeoisie Liberals of our time. Though I suppose neoliberalism (even as a passé term) can encompass both sides of the partisan divide. Now that’s the American melting pot I know baby.
[6] And if you’re ever actually in France, BiBoViNo is an absolute banger fyi.
[7] https://www.jennyandfrancois.com/fromthetank/.
[8] Invite me to your fancy parties and watch me drop lines like the “clay-loam influence is obvious here, as is the wet stone minerality” and “a tactile sense of seemingly schistic, crushed stone impingement” with absolute deadpan and unflinching conviction.