Totally Tubular Wine!

by Luanne Bradley on October 27, 2009 in Food

four wine

It’s not your grandmother’s wine box!

This 3-liter tube contains a premium, rich and structured California Cab – the first release by winemaker Barry Gnekow, who went looking for a way to drink outside the box and to entertain without the waste.

“My goal was to produce the equivalent of a $25 bottle of wine that could be delivered to the consumer at under $10 per bottle,” he says.

At $40 a tube, The FOUR Cabernet scores many eco points. It eliminates expensive traditional glass-and-cork packaging, cutting wine bottle landfill waste by 85%. The vino package is 100% recyclable and the label is produced by windpower. The cardboard tubes weigh 20% less than glass and can be transported using less gas.

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And it’s not just the package that defies the throw-away mentality. The wine, itself, also endures until all 24 glasses are poured.

“The great thing is that it holds about four bottles worth and stays fresh up to 4 weeks after opening,” explains James Robinson of WineStyles, a retail wine store and tasting club in San Francisco. “Often with red wine, people toss out what they don’t drink after a day or two, because it goes bad.”

Robinson poured me a taste out of the spout, and I found it to be delicious, medium-bodied, plummy and lightly oaked, even on its last legs, about two weeks opened.

The wine maker also promises to deliver white wine in a tube, including Chardonnays, at some point this year.

ambergirl
October 28th, 2009 at 5:41 AM

FOUR is a fantastic high quality wine- A much needed update on affordable yet premium Cabernet. I had a chance to try it a few weeks ago & thought it had a fine color, very developed & dimensional taste with sort of a “high arch” & was a bit peppery. Actually it reminded me of a a good French burgundy, Not that I’ve had many! lol

I also love that it help saves cork trees, it fails to be an eyesore & looks nicer than its boxed counterparts. Plus since an entire bottle does not have to be consumed at once lasts for as long as you reasonably want it to whilst staying fresh.
Todd
October 28th, 2009 at 10:22 AM

I assume that the wine is contained within a plastic bladder and I certainly don’t like my food stored in plastic. In addition to being inert, meaning perfect for food storage, glass is easy to recycle. Also in my experience most good red wines, and some white, are greatly enhanced if they are aged after being purchased. I wouldn’t want to be aging wine in this package and I’m sure the producer isn’t expecting people to.

A note to ambergirl. A good Burgundy is earthy, on occasion a bit funky (the term is barnyard), and elegant. Of course there are many, many styles of Burgundy but they are a far cry from modern, over extracted, California “style” wines.