Most boxed wines have only a slightly higher reputation than Boone's Farm Strawberry wine, but some wineries are trying to change the image of their box wines by re-branding them and improving the packaging. Box wines have the advantage of being easier to transport and are more easily recycled, which makes them more environmentally friendly than bottled wines. In addition, because of the foil packaging, the wine lasts a lot longer before it goes bad. However, despite the benefits, not many wine drinkers have converted to box-wine drinkers.
In order to change that, Underdog Wine Merchants, who are partnering with six wineries, are unveiling a series of box wines that they are hoping will look “sexy” on the dinner table. The sexiness of the boxes is due to their shape- octagon and their price- $2-3 cheaper than a bottle. Wineberry’s America’s Boxes has a different idea for improving on the traditional box wine- they are using wooden boxes instead, which is a definite improvement aesthetically speaking on the usual box wines.
The wineries who are using the innovative packaging are claiming that the packages are not what’s important about their wines and insist that the grapes and the wines themselves are the major selling points of each wine. Whether that is true or not remains to be seen, but the packaging has definitely moved a step forward in the right direction.