Boxed Wine Beats Corked Wine

If you've got a secret fondness for wine in a box (or you just like a good bargain), you may be able to out yourself without embarrassment.

Scientists in Canada say that multilayer aseptic cartons — that’s "boxes," to you and me — may help reduce levels of substances that can ruin wine.

Gary Pickering of Canada's University of Brock says that even tiny amounts of chemicals called alkyl-methoxypyrazines (MPs) generally destroy wine, hiding the nice fruity and floral flavors and making the vino taste icky. So he and colleagues at the University of Guelph thought they'd see the effects of wine packaging and closures like corks and screw caps.

So they added MPs to Rieslings and Cabernet Franc wines and monitored the levels for 18 months in wine packaged in boxes versus wine in bottles with natural cork, synthetic cork, and screw caps. Boxed wine had up to 45 percent less MPs at the end of the study period than any other packaging, the researchers reported in "Effect of Closure and Packaging Type on 3-Alkyl-2-methoxypyrazines and Other Impact Odorants of Riesling and Cabernet Franc Wines," published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. The next best-performing packaging was the bottle with the molded synthetic cork, followed by the screw cap. In last place: the natural cork.

One problem with the boxed wine: Evidence of greater oxidation of the wine, which is definitely something to whine about if you’re an oenophile.