The latest in green tippling

Wine in boxes

By Kim Carlson

August 19, 2008

In a recent New York Times Op-Ed, Tyler Colman gave two good reasons why Americans should stop thinking of boxed wine as downmarket, although one of those reasons — that it’s economical — may not go far in changing that perception. Colman’s other reason — that boxed wine weighs less and thus has a lower carbon-dioxide footprint — may get some people’s attention:

More than 90 percent of American wine production occurs on the West Coast, but because the majority of consumers live east of the Mississippi, a large part of carbon-dioxide emissions associated with wine comes from simply trucking it from the vineyard to tables on the East Coast. A standard wine bottle holds 750 milliliters of wine and generates about 5.2 pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions when it travels from a vineyard in California to a store in New York. A 3-liter box generates about half the emissions per 750 milliliters. Switching to wine in a box for the 97 percent of wines that are made to be consumed within a year would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about two million tons, or the equivalent of retiring 400,000 cars.

What do you think, wine drinkers? Could you embrace the box? Or have you already done so?