Box Wines! The 2022 Guide To The Best Box Wine

Box wine has a bad rap, and unfortunately a lot of it is deserved. There are way too many producers out there solely using the box to keep their costs as low as possible – including filling it with the cheapest wine possible. Bad wine is bad wine, no matter how cheap it is and the format it comes in!

Once hidden away from judging eyes behind coffee machines or cookie jars or stashed deep inside refrigerators, box wines have begun to come of age and can represent the ultimate value for wine drinkers. The only problem is winnowing the wheat from the chaff because as we found firsthand -- there's still a whole lot of boxed plonk out there.

Before we get to all of our favorite picks, let's answer the question...

Why box wine?

1) Convenience is a major factor. The typical box is three liters (3L), which is the equivalent of 4 bottles. Boxes are easy to buy, easy to transport from the store (seriously, try carrying 8 bottles of wine in your arms and then compare that to just two boxes), easy to use (no corkscrew necessary), and always on hand and ready to please whether you just want a smidge or you need to (discreetly) fill your Starbucks Trenta cup.

2) Cost! Not only do you generally save purely because you are buying in bulk, but bag in box packaging costs a fraction of traditional glass bottlings for the same amount of wine. In addition, with the box packaging itself weighing about the same as a single glass bottle there are massive savings in shipping costs which in theory get passed on to you.

3) It's environmentally friendly. Thanks to the aforementioned lighter packaging, box wines are much lighter to ship at all points in the supply chain and have a carbon footprint less than half that of the equivalent bottles.

4) It stays fresh for 4-6 weeks. Even the best preservation methods for a bottle of wine will only save it for a few days, but with the vacuum sealed pouches used today your wine stays as good as new for weeks after you pour the first glass.

5) And last but not least, box wine puts an end to worries about cork taint which affects a surprising number of bottles. (Probably unknowingly to most consumers -- they just assume the wine was no good and don't buy it again.)

Because of these advantages it's no surprise that sales of box wines are increasing year over year at a double-digit rate (10+%) in the USA. Even with this increase; however, adoptance in the U.S. is still quite low at less than 10% of sales. In Europe, on the other hand, box wines make up about 20% of wine sales and in Australia, the land of the screw cap, it's an astounding 50%!

After tasting hundreds of boxed wines, we find that they generally seem to divide into two camps -- those that focus on keeping the wine as cheap as possible (which are not always the brands you would expect) while still producing something relatively good versus those that are focused more on the quality of the wine but turn to the box for convenience or because of environmental concerns. As you might guess the quality of wine is significantly better in the second group.

It's also interesting to note that while the trend in bottled wines has been to higher alcohol reds, very few of these boxes cross the 13% alcohol level. My guess is that this is simply another cost saving measure, as the excise tax for wine increases once alcohol level hits 14%. This does raise some concerns as it could mean producers are putting too much focus on their costs rather than on quality -- i.e. are they sacrificing the quality of the wine to keep the alcohol percentage artificially low? I have my suspicions, although no definitive answers, but it's certainly something to watch for in this growing segment.

At Reverse Wine Snob we are constantly on the search for those wineries putting quality wine in a box for all the right reasons. Below are our favorite picks for the best inexpensive boxes on the market.

Click here to get a printable shopping list of the best box wine!

And while we haven't tried every iteration of every box out there, we have and continue to try quite a few. If you don't see a brand on this list, it's most likely because we don't recommend it. We love this format but we're still discerning about what goes into it!

Read on for our list of The Best Box Wine!

(Note that while some of the pictures below are of bottles, all of these wines are available in a box!)