hooray! frat slaps are getting classier.

For me, the thought of boxed wine brings to mind frat slaps (and subsequently the worst night of my entire college career) and the general lack of classiness that goes hand in hand with drinking in college: cheap beer shotgunned in a dorm shower; shots of Aristocrat chased by vending machine Diet Coke; shady water bottles smuggled into any and every event. Ah, don’t you miss it? 

During my senior year of college, my roommates and I gravitated toward the super classy glass jug of Livingston Farms Blush Chablis, but I am no stranger to boxed wine. According to this New York Times article, boxed wine is becoming more common and more popular, partly because it is a heck of a lot better for the environment:

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.

Pretty cool, right? Of course, there are plenty of people who would never resort to boxed wine (the horror!), like one dude who commented on the article and wrote: “Utter lunacy. I’ll buy wine in a box on the Tenth of Never.” Oh calm down sir! It’s not as if we’re asking you to do an ice luge in a tuxedo. Perhaps because I’m sort of poor and still drink like a college student, I think this is all pretty great. A decent boxed wine gets you more bang for your buck, is better for the environment, and has a longer shelf life. And now that boxed wine is getting sort of trendy and necessary, nicer wines are starting to become available in boxed form. Maybe you don’t want to be served from a box at a restaurant (…resisting immature joke), but why not pass around the plastic bag at a casual dinner party with friends? 

Anyway, next time you’re spinning in circles chugging directly from a bag of Franzia while your friends cheer you on, remember this: you’re not just blacking out; you’re saving the environment.

[Posted by Mallory]