Now, liquor stores have entire shelves of boxes. And they all cheerily tout their eco-benefits: Chiefly, they're lighter, so it doesn't require as much fuel to transport them - before or after you drink what's inside.
The wine - four bottles' worth per typical box - is actually in a plastic bladder inside. You punch out a perforated hole on the side of the box to extract a tiny spigot.
I took samples up to my bathroom scale. The box weighed seven pounds, four bottles weighed 12. Multiply that by the truckload!
New York wine author Tyler Colman has. It's an extension of his earlier transportation study with sustainability expert Pablo Paster when they found that although France is farther from Philly than California, Bordeaux by boat has a smaller carbon footprint than Napa by truck.
A votre santé!
Clearly, no one is going to cellar a box, and there's something special about Brunello in a bottle.
But consider that Colman figures boxed wine generates half the emissions of bottled. If 97 percent of the wines made to be consumed in a year were boxed, he says, it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by two million tons. Or about 400,000 cars' worth.
It also turns out that most cardboard these days is made from recycled cardboard, while most wine bottles are made from virgin silica.
When you've finished the last drop, the cardboard can be recycled yet again. Indeed, cardboard is "one of the hottest commodities around right now," says David Biddle of the Greater Philadelphia Recycling Council.
There's not much demand for recycled glass.
Still another bennie of the box: Less waste. The bladder collapses as you "pour," so no air gets in. The wine stays fresh for weeks.
Apparently, consumers are embracing the box. Some estimate it's 50 percent of the market in northern Europe.
Colman just got back from the south of France, where "every fridge has a box of rosé" come August.
Earlier this summer, Italy's agriculture department authorized producers to use boxes.
