It’s 2024, which means we’re all tightening our bootstraps and doing our best to save money where we can. Does austerity mean shortchanging your holiday and or year-rouhnd festivities? Not at all. The most important thing about this time of year is appreciating and spending time with people we care about. And when it comes to planning libations for a crowd, one way to tighten our purse strings is by swapping out expensive premium bottles for the affordable volume that comes with boxed wine.

Boxed wine is often automatically associated with bad wine, and while that’s sometimes the case, it’s not always so. There are decent boxed wines out there, certainly at a level to appease the masses in a jovial party setting. Careful selection can go a long way.

Tips for finding an enjoyable boxed wine

Look for the indicators. There are a few things about a box that can hint at a better-quality wine. If you spot a vintage year, that’s a good sign. You might also find an appellation marker such as Ontario’s VQA, which means a wine is made from 100% Ontario-grown grapes and needs to meet regulated quality standards. Wines without these indicators aren’t necessarily bad, but you can choose wines that do carry them with more confidence.

Decant, decant, decant. We truly cannot emphasize this enough. Any wine that’s been enclosed in a vessel needs to be exposed to air. This is called letting the wine breathe, which releases unwanted chemical compounds and lets the more desirable ones surface and develop. And if a wine that’s lived in glass needs to breathe, you can bet a wine that’s trapped in plastic is gasping for air. As a bonus, if you’re worried your guests will sneer at getting wine from a box, keep the cardboard in the kitchen and deliver the wine to the table in a classy decanter. Chances are no one will be the wiser.

Once it’s open, keep it in the fridge. Yes, even the reds. Boxed wine can be stored at room temperature before the seal is broken. But once open, the fridge will extend its shelf life closer to the six weeks that’s claimed on most boxed wine packaging. If you’re buying this for a party and expect to go through the entire box in a night, you can skip this for the reds. (Though the lighter reds that tend to end up in boxes are often better served slightly chilled, so this is at your discretion.)

The pros and cons of boxed wine

Pros: Lower cost, less waste, lower carbon footprint. If a wine is available in a bottle and a box, there’s a solid argument for choosing the box. Plastic quality has improved greatly over the years, and there’s little perceptible difference between the two vessels in younger wines. You’ll pay less up front by volume, and the lighter weight means boxes have a lower carbon footprint in shipping. Keep the boxes and bags together once empty and you can take them to The Beer Store with the rest of your returns. You’ll also waste less if you have leftovers from a party since you can enjoy open boxes for weeks afterward.

Cons: Fewer options, and even fewer local producers. Boxed wine is good for a lot of things, but protecting and aging fine wine isn’t one of them. If your guests are discerning, consider saving on boxed white wine and splurging on a few bottles of quality red. One more important point: boxed wine requires huge volumes, so you’ll most often find it produced by large-scale, internationally owned wineries. If your budget allows you to spend more and support local boutique producers, please consider doing so. They need your business more than the giants do.

How many bottles are in a box of wine?

In Ontario, a box of wine typically contains 3 litres. This is the equivalent to four standard 750 mL bottles of wine.

What is a good boxed white wine?

As boxed wines go, white wine is the safest bet. Most are unoaked and meant to be enjoyed young. We were confident enough in this that we did zero prior research and walked straight into our local LCBO to find a boxed white wine to take home on the spot. In the Jackson-Triggs 2021 Reserve Sauvignon Blanc, this experiment was a success. It’s priced at $43.95 for a 3-litre box, which is the equivalent of $10.99 per bottle, while a separate 750 mL bottle costs $14.95. It’s labeled both as a VQA wine and with a vintage, both solid indicators of quality. With aromas of fresh sweet apple and grapefruit followed up with tarter lemon flavours amid balanced acidity, we’d just as happily buy this in a box as we would in a bottle.

What is a good red wine in a box?

Unlike white wine, finding a quality red wine in a box is challenging. The oak and tannin that define most red wines need years of aging to develop and soften. This is why many red wines in a box can taste off: they may be sweet, overly oaky, very strong, and sometimes just generally unpleasant. If you’re looking for a good red wine in a box, choose one with no tannin, no oak, and that’s more often enjoyed young. In Ontario, the wine that fits the bill is our local darling, Baco Noir. We went a little out of our way to pick up this Sandbanks Baco Noir, and it paid off. It’s priced by the 3-litre box at $47.95 at the LCBO. This equates to $11.99 per 750 mL bottle, while that same bottle on its own costs $15.95. It’s a VQA wine that’s non-vintage, meaning it doesn’t carry a production year. Non-vintage wines are typically made by blending multiple vintages of the same varietal with the goal of consistency, especially in mass production. We looked to the VQA indicator and single varietal labeling in making our selection. With dark berries, black plum, and vanilla on the nose, plus a palate of tangy berries with more vanilla and a light spicy smokiness, this is a crowd-pleaser. It benefits from a long decant, so set it out to breathe for an hour before serving if you can.

What is a good rosé wine in a box?

People don’t expect to be offered a rosé as an option at a holiday party. If you want to be the host with the most and offer up some surprise and delight, this is a great way to do it. Tread carefully, though: one wrong step and you could be wading into 1990s White Zinfandel levels of cloying sweetness. To skirt that possibility, we picked up this Bask Crisp Rosé. At the LCBO, it’s priced at $41.95 per 3-litre box, which comes out to the equivalent of $10.49 per 750 mL. A separate bottle of that same size costs $13.95. How did we know this wouldn’t be sweet? Its label says it has 0 grams of sugar per 3/4 cup serving. (Note this wine is not entirely sugar-free; it’s labeled this way because that precise volume has 0.49 grams of sugar, which rounds down to zero.) This is a non-vintage international blend that doesn’t declare its varietals, which we’d typically shy away from, but boxed rosé is slim pickings at this time of year. We enjoyed its aromas of cherry and watermelon followed up with flavours of fresh strawberry, more melon, and a hint of spicy warmth. This wine is much better when it’s on the colder side, so don’t let it get too warm in between servings.