Box Wines
A wine blog with news and reviews of affordable wines

Price: $3
Maker: Oak Leaf Vineyards, Ripon, California
Varietal: Cabernet Sauvignon
Packaging: 750 ml bottle, artificial cork
Alcohol: 12.5%
Our Rating: 8 out of 10

We’ve been hoping for a Two Buck Chuck beater to emerge, and it looks like Oak Leaf Cabernet Sauvignon may be it. This non-vintage offering is sold by Wal-Mart, and seems to be aimed squarely at the Charles Shaw wines sold through the much smaller Trader Joe’s chain. The nose is a rather unprepossessing mix of oak and vanilla. The flavor has lots of cherries and raspberries, along with vanilla. The finish is oaky with prominent tannins. Overall, this Cab is simple and juicy. It has a nice finish for a cheap non-vintage wine. There’s an unusual residual berry flavor, almost perfumy, that lingered on the tongue.

Overall, Oak Leaf Cabernet Sauvignon beats its $3-range competition like Two Buck Chuck and Tisdale. It’s all relative, of course. None of these are great wines, but to my taste this is the most drinkable one of the bunch. Plus, it has the advantage of widespread distribution via Wal-Mart.

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Price: $9
Maker: Ravenswood Vintners, Reynella, SA, Australia
Varietal: Shiraz
Packaging: 750 ml bottle, natural cork
Alcohol: 13.9%
Our Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Ravenswood Vintners Blend South Eastern Australia Shiraz 2004 is, as the name suggests, an Aussie import under the Ravenswood label best known for their California Zinfandels. If you are looking for Shiraz, Australia isn’t a bad place to look for it. This one has a nice aroma of leather and spice. It’s got jammy raspberry and black cherry notes, a bit of chocolate, and a light oak finish. All in all, it’s what you might expect from Ravenswood - a big, fruity Shiraz with a sort of Zin sensibility.

As befits the Australia origin, the label for this Shiraz substitutes kangaroos for the usual ravens in the circular design. The slogan at Ravenswood is “No Wimpy Wines,” and their Vintners Blend South Eastern Australia Shiraz fulfills that promise.

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Price: $6
Maker: Lindemans Wines, Australia
Varietal: Shiraz 60%, Cabernet Sauvignon 40% blend
Packaging: 750 ml bottle, artificial cork
Alcohol: 13.5%
Our Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Lindemans Bin 55 Shiraz Cabernet 2006 is another bargain blend from this major Australian winemaker. It has blackberry, plum, and cocoa notes with a slightly peppery finish. It isn’t overly complex, but is pleasant and very drinkable.

Tom & Melody said of this blend, “It’s very fruit forward. It’s luscious if one’s taste leans toward fruit dominance. It’s too much if one’s taste leans toward dryness and acidity.”

When it comes to Lindemans blends, we probably slightly prefer their Cab-Merlot. Still, for the price, Lindemans Bin 55 Shiraz Cabernet 2006 is hard to beat.

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NBC’s Today Show did a frothy piece on the increasing quality and acceptance of boxed wines today. Much of the segment involved a couple of the hosts trying to guess whether they were drinking box or bottle wine. They actually guessed correctly most of the time, but it was hardly scientific. Here’s the video:

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Price: $12
Maker: McWilliam’s Hanwood Estate, New South Wales, Australia
Varietal: Zinfandel
Packaging: 750 ml bottle, natural cork
Alcohol: 14.1%
Our Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Baron Herzog Lodi Old Vine Zinfandel 2004 is the first kosher wine that we’ve tried, at least knowingly, and we liked it. It has aromas of berries and smoky leather. The wine is medium to full-bodied and nicely structured. Flavor notes include cherries, dark berries, chocolate, and toasted oak.

The Baron Herzog website says, “These old-vine Zinfandel grapes are taken entirely from gnarly, head-trained vines in the Watts Vineyard. The wine is aged in 30% new and 70% one year old American barrels for six months.”

This isn’t the biggest and boldest Zin we’ve tasted, but it has a lot to offer with its pleasantly complex flavors.

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Price: $6
Maker: Lindemans Wines, Australia
Varietal: Cabernet Sauvignon 60%, Merlot 40%
Packaging: 750 ml bottle, artificial cork
Alcohol: 13.5%
Our Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Lindemans Bin 80 Cabernet Merlot 2007 is a youthful but nice addition to this Australian winemaker’s lineup. We’ve been partial to their products in the past, notably Lindemans Cawarra Shiraz Cabernet 2004 and Lindemans Bin 50 Shiraz 2005. This red wine is 60% Cabernet Sauvignon and 40% Merlot. It has an earthy cherry and spice nose. It’s well-structured, with plum and cherry notes dominating its fruit forward flavor.

Perhaps it’s the minimal age of this wine, but we found it needed plenty of breathing time to bring out the nice balance between fruit and tannins.

As seems to be typical for Lindemans, their Bin 80 Cabernet Merlot 2007 is a true bargain - a very drinkable red at a great price.

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Price: $19
Maker: Black Box Wines, Madera, California
Varietal: Cabernet Sauvignon
Packaging: 3-liter box
Alcohol: 13.5%
Our Rating: 8.5 out of 10

The last time we tried Black Box Paso Robles Cabernet Sauvignon (the 2005), we didn’t care for it much. Rating it only 7.5, we speculated that perhaps we had a bad box. Happily, the 2006 we tried is back to the level we saw in the 2004 version. Oaky berries feature in the mild aroma of this wine. It is medium-bodied and quite juicy, with plums and currants blending with cocoa notes and well-structured tannins.

This wine has restored our faith in Black Box as a purveyor of decent wines. Black Box Paso Robles Cabernet Sauvignon 2006 isn’t a great wine, but it’s pleasant and drinkable. One oddity we found was some sediment in the bottom of this box. That’s something we haven’t encountered in many box wines, which are usually young and clear. It didn’t affect the flavor at all, and we probably wouldn’t have notice had we not gone to extreme measures to drain the last glass from the box. The other oddity was that the usually reliable push-button spigot had a “dribble” problem. Twist spigots often show that issue, but this is one of the first push-buttons I’ve encountered that let go an extra drop or two after the glass was poured.

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Price: $12
Maker: McWilliams Hanwood Estate, New South Wales, Australia
Variety: Merlot
Packaging: 750 ml bottle, natural cork
Our Rating: 8.5 out of 10

McWilliam’s Hanwood Estate Merlot 2006 is another example of the inexpensive but tasty red in McWilliams’ Hanwood Estate Line. We found it on sale for a mere $8, and it was difficult to pass up. Its nose is licorice and berry, and it has plum, clove, vanilla, and oak notes on the palate. The wine is well balanced, and the finish is relatively complex.

We last tried the 2003 version of McWilliam’s Hanwood Estate Merlot, and scored it a rare “9″ - either our standards have gradually shifted, or the 2003 was an exceptional year for this wine.

The McWilliams Wines indicates that McWilliam’s Hanwood Estate Merlot 2006 has already won a couple of silver medals - one at the 2008 Monterey Wine Competition and one at the 2008 Florida State Fair. Of the McWilliams wines we’ve tasted lately, our favorite remains the 2005 Shiraz. This Merlot might be a close second, though.

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Price: $17
Maker: Souverain, Napa Valley, California
Varietal: Merlot
Packaging: 750 ml bottle, natural cork
Alcohol: 13.9%
Our Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Souverain Alexander Valley Merlot 2005 is a very pleasant red. It has a spicy berry aroma, with black cherry, plum, and chocolate notes on the palate. The finish has spice and oak with mild tannins. We liked the balance of this wine, and are looking forward to sampling some of their other wines.

Souverain has an interesting history:

The history of Souverain began in the Napa Valley in 1944 when J. Leland “Lee” Stewart harvested his first crop of wine grapes from his Howell Mountain property in the northern part of the valley. At the suggestion of his young daughter, Stewart named his winery “Souverain” (taken from the French word for “sovereign” or “supreme”), and his Cabernet Sauvignon bottlings from the 1960s were considered by many to be just that.

In the years that followed, Stewart used innovation and a natural gift for winemaking to establish Souverain as one of the great California wineries. The winery moved to the Alexander Valley when Stewart eventually sold it in 1973.

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Price: $5
Maker: Viña San Pedro S. A., Molina, Chile
Varietal: Merlot
Packaging: 750 ml bottle, natural cork
Alcohol: 13.5%
Our Rating: 8 out of 10

Gato Negro Merlot 2007 was an inexpensive find at a megastore wine shop. Its label reminded me of some of the great Trader Joe bargains I’d tried last year, but the wine itself didn’t quite measure up. It had an odd aroma that had woody licorice notes overpowering weak berry notes. The flavor was also a bit odd, with plum, herb, and chocolate notes. If this wine has a redeeming feature, it’s the long finish that brings out some spice, more pleasant berry notes, and robust tannins. Gato Negro Merlot wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but was lacking in typical Merlot characteristics.

We did find that this wine was helped by extensive breathing when half a bottle was accidentally left uncorked overnight. I was expecting the worst when I next tasted it, but the wine had actually improved a bit.

Viña San Pedro is a significant player:

Founded in 1865 by the Correa Albano brothers, Viña San Pedro is today the second largest Chilean wine exporter and the country’s third biggest winery. The winery and is located in Curicó Valley, where San Pedro owns one of the largest continuous area of vineyards in South America, with 1,200 hectares. In total San Pedro has over 2,500 hectares planted all along the Central Valley. Since 1990 the company has long term contracts and has been acquiring vineyards in Chile’s other main viticulture valleys, such as Leyda, Colchagua, Maipo, San Antonio, Casablanca, Elqui and Limarí. Today these vineyards provide perfect conditions for several varieties.

VSP is present in almost 80 markets on all five continents with its brands Cabo de Hornos, 1865, Castillo de Molina, 35°South, and GatoNegro. This wide brand portfolio allows it to target a great variety of consumers throughout the world.

Gato Negro Merlot won’t make our favorites list, but we look forward to tasting some other products from this Chilean winery.

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