My faithful readers know that I am a drinker of boxed wine because it is less expensive, tastes bad, and I don’t care what other people think. So I very much enjoyed reading this article on cnnmoney about Fred Franzia, the king of cheap wine.

He’s worked in the wine industry his entire life, but he calls the grapes “varieties” instead of “varietals.” For a while, he has me convinced that he’s planted some weird grape I’ve never heard of called “moh-ver-dee,” until I realize he’s talking about the Rhône varietal mourvêdre. Driving by a guy selling fruit along the side of the road in the hot sun might fill some with pity, but Franzia looks on with pride. He pokes me with a thick finger and says, “That’s a real businessman.”

I love it - this guy is great. “Who do I have to impress?” he says, while “he utters very few sentences that don’t contain at least one curse word.”

While many winemakers say they hate Franzia because he’s a bully or because he’s crude or because he operates close to one side or another of the law, Franzia believes it’s because he exposes their pretentiousness. “Sniff it and smell it and taste the inner body,” he says, scoffing. “They’re trying to confuse the consumer. You either like it or you don’t like it. You shouldn’t make them feel like second-class citizens. I love to sell something you don’t have to give an excuse for.”

He’s a hard woker - 100 hours a week. And he says “All I care about is making money.” - I think Ayn Rand would love him. I like this quote of his - “Success is easy if you think of it like rust: It’s inevitable if you keep at it. You look for magic moments, but they’re not there. Guys can claim they are, but that’s bullshit.”

If I lived in Italy I would stop buying wine in a box and instead bring my own jug to the store and fill it up from one of these:

I got some for €1 per liter from the tank pictured above. As maoxian would say, that’s close to my favorite price.
We biked through Tuscany - it was great. The wine goes down like water. I’ll post more about it later.

I just bought this box of wine today and haven’t tried it yet, but I can still write the review.
It isn’t going to taste good. It will taste about the same to me as the Chianti that I reviewed last time. As a matter of fact, I don’t know if I would be able to tell the difference between the two. I could probably taste a difference, but I don’t think I’d be able to pick them out in a blind taste test.
It is going to taste like cheap box wine.
But I’m starting to think that taste is for wimps. This 5 liter box of wine for $12.99 gives me the same health benefits and buzz that a $5000 750ml bottle does. It just doesn’t taste as good.
But what is taste? It is here and gone in a gulp. Does it do you any good? I used to think that I’d rather have a good bottle of wine over a bad box of wine, if cost weren’t an issue. But now I think I might rather have the bad. The good wine could make me soft. I might start to complain and be unsatisfied with the less finer tasting things in life.
Overall I highly recommend the 2007 Franzia Burgundy which I haven’t tried yet because it is cheap, good for you, and probably tastes bad.

Inspired by Tom, I have decided to start trying and reviewing different kinds of boxed wine. I’ll start with one of my favorites, the 2007 Franzia Chianti.
The reason I like this one so much is because of its supple, plush and explosive structure, with its plum and violet-tinged currant flavors which pull it all together into a deft package that glides through with a long and expressive finish. For wine in a box, it really has tremendous depth and presence.
Overall, though, it just tastes like pretty bad wine and the main reason I buy this one is because at $12 a box, it is some of the cheapest wine you can get at under $2 per 750ml.