Single serving box wine

Leave it to The Three Thieves to come up with juice box wine....

By Jon Bonné
MSNBC
Updated: 7:58 a.m. ET April 19, 2006

Jon Bonné
Lifestyle editor

Just when we got used to wine in a box getting respectable, it’s been reinvented.

Three Thieves, a partnership of vintners Joel Gott and Roger Scommegna, and Charles Bieler of France’s Chateau Routas, knows something about packaging wine. Their jug wines — which kitschily evoked memories of low-grade plonk but improved on the wine in the bottle — were revolutionary when unveiled a couple years ago. Next came their 1-liter Tetra Briks, soft-sided boxes that could easily tuck into a crowded refrigerator and eliminated the need for all that glass.

Now they’ve shrunk their boxes. The Three Thieves 250-ml “bullets,” sold four to a pack, resemble elongated, narrow juice boxes with less severe edges. It’s nothing new to buy such a four-pack; mass-market brands like Gallo and Sutter Home have been doing it for years. (Sutter Home was the brainchild of Trinchero Family Estates, which has become a partner in the Three Thieves project.). But the new format offers both more wine — 250 ml, versus the standard 187-ml serving — and less waste.

Full story from MSNBC

Actually, they didn't come up with it, Alan---they just had the business sense to come out with it.

When I was a wine buyer in the 1980s, I had proposals come across my desk for wine in "juice boxes", cans, plastic mini-bottles, and the soft-sided plastic packs. They didn't get past the gatekeepers then, that's all.