The days of boxed wines being a cheap alternative may be gone.  My Favorite Neighbor just released a new three-liter boxed edition of its 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon--inaugurating a pilot effort to explore the viability of alternative sustainable packaging in the prestige wine space. The carbon footprint of the boxed package is eight times lower compared to glass bottles.

Equivalent in volume to four standard bottles of wine, the boxed edition of the MFN 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon costs just $160--a substantial savings compared to buying four bottles at the regular price of $55 per bottle. The product's self-collapsing "bag-in-box" technology eliminates oxidation and provides a post-opening shelf life of more than a month. The preceding 2020 vintage of My Favorite Neighbor Cabernet Sauvignon was rated 95 points by The Wine Advocate.

A total of 300 units were produced, equivalent to 100 standard cases of wine. The boxed edition of the 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon is now available on a direct-to-consumer basis at MyFavoriteNeighbor.com.

According to boxed packaging manufacturer Smurfit Kappa, "In multiple studies conducted, Bag-in-Box clearly shows the best results in terms of global warming potential with an eight times lower carbon footprint than glass bottles."

The box and the bag are easily separable, facilitating the recycling of the corrugated box. The recyclability of the bag depends on local collecting-sorting and recycling infrastructure.

"We believe that there is great potential for fine wines to embrace future-forward packaging," Sprague said. "We hope that our customers love it, and if they do, we will grow this program and see where it takes us."