A grand bag-in-box wine revolution has been promised for ages. I’m not so much seeing a great smashing of glass as I’m noticing a new era of quiet affirmation, as good wines sheath themselves in recyclable cardboard and drinkers take to Instagram to parade their pouches.
Bag-in-box (and pouch) wines are what people drink in private, not in public. There’s one in my fridge – they are a piece of the new kitchen furniture, like the boiling water tap or the SodaStream. With a good bag-in-box nestling in the fridge, you can give the tap a little squeeze and fill your glass with a few refreshing gulps of icy white wine or watermelon-and-peaches rosé at any time.
The bliss is that there’s no big decision about opening a bottle and no fuss about how little (or how much) you might want to drink. But which are the good ones? Victoria Moore rates a selection of red, white and rosé.
White
My sample was faulty – oxidised – with sherry-like faint notes. A one-off? Maybe. But the numbers stamped on the box were 149-23, which means it was packed on the 149th day of 2023 - over a year ago. That’s not good news for a bag-in-box that’s not built to last so long.
Ooof. Thick and glossy but, as sauvignon blanc goes, also quite insipid. The worst thing, though, is that it tastes sweet in a really unpleasant, disjointed way.
It’s warm in Puglia where these grapes are grown and, as a result, the wine is broad and a bit fat, with notes of yellow plum. Not the cool, crisp white I’m after.
Clean, fresh and a bit lemony. It’s not thrilling but it’s a decent white from the mountains of northern Italy and I like it. Drink with a bacon, frisée, avocado and cheese salad.
Torres Viña Sol is a stalwart; a reliable, fairly neutral, refreshing wine that is good quality for the price. It translates very well to bag-in-box too. A thirst-slaker for the garden.
Only drink the rosé ‘chicken wine’? You’re missing out. The white is a joy, a blend of several grapes including bourboulenc, grenache blanc and vermentino. Think white peach and white blossom. Lovely and fresh.
More of a wine to drink with food than a thirst-slaker, this blend of grenache blanc, roussanne and vermentino has a textural quality with notes of oregano, thyme and blood orange peel notes. It’d be great with, say, red snapper with fennel salad.
One sniff of this and you’re sitting under plane trees in a French square. Lovely honest wine and works well as an apéro. Crisp and refreshing, with notes of fennel, meadow grass, white grapefruit and lemon pale citrus. The grapes are grenache blanc, terret and colombard.
Rosé
Easy-drinking if you serve it icy cold but it’s very simple and open. Also a little bit icing-sugar-sweet.
Decent rosé, a little bit thick, with some notes of strawberries and raspberries. A tiny bit inert, although the person I offloaded it to liked it enough to buy five more.
A clear step up from the Dame en Rose, this is paler and finer. Pretty decent, considering how hard it is to find Provence rosé for under a tenner.
Clean, refreshing and moreish, this cult classic tastes of white peach and watermelon, and translates well to bag-in-box. I’ve bought one for my own summer holiday fridge.
Of all the pink samples I tried, this was the one that everyone demolished and was what I chose to pour. Made from grenache and cinsault; very fresh, slightly stony. Like the white, it has a ‘country’ feel and tastes very honest. Lovely.
Red
The cheapest bag-in-box malbecs come from Chile, rather than Argentina, and sometimes you have to look quite hard to spot that information. This smells of dirty railway stations and tastes quite sweet. Avoid.
Smooth red wine that tastes of plums; as if someone had poured a bit of caramel into the glass. I don’t like my wine to taste of burnt sugar so…
About as good as you could hope for at the price. Smooth, rounded and sweet, like red and black fruit pastilles. Some will knock it back, but it’s not my bag.
A simple, well-made and reasonably innocuous red wine that you could drink at a barbecue. Notes of ripe strawberries on a sunny day.
This is alright – it’s dry and has some regional typicity. But I expected better for the price and from The Wine Society. Somehow, every time I pour a glass it goes untouched.
There’s a best before date on this box and my sample has already passed it when it arrives. Nonetheless, it smells and tastes pretty good – a big step up from the other malbecs with some fruity and spicy notes.
Wow. A red with some ageing sold in a bag-in-box is unexpected – but very welcome. Mature notes of tobacco and dried leaves, with some dry tannins, mingle with fresher flavours of brambles. Slightly rustic, in a good way.
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