The Bad and the Good...

And then the bad again.

Tonight I had an encounter with boxed wine. It's been a while since I've tried that particular niche in the wine market. Back in my not so tame college days, I used to love the stuff. I'll spare the pictures, because I'm not holding back on this review. All I can say is that it came in a square box, maybe 12" x 12" and about 4" deep. There were three different brands fitting this description, and I have a feeling that it doesn't matter too much which one I picked.

(The Bad)
Sure, it tasted like old grape juice, but it did the trick. I mean, if you're going for boxed wine, you have a pretty specific plan in mind. Granted, you don't usually remember why you did it the next morning, but you have to assume that it worked. As I'm writing this, I cringe to imagine how I'm going to feel tomorrow at 7:30 after just having a few glasses of the stuff tonight.

(The Good)
I'll give it this, if you are trying to "drink a little too much", this stuff is great. It's cheap. I did the math, and one box is 6.5 bottles worth. I payed $12 for the box, so that's a mere $2 or so per bottle. Try to remember, have you ever seen a $2 bottle of wine in the store? I very much doubt it. This is probably explained by the rationale that "bums" would buy $2 bottles, but not be able to "invest" in a $12 box, aka, six bottles of $2 cheap drunkenness.

(The Bad again)
This wine is horrible. Prison wine probably rivals it in quality. Think about it, this is the equivalent of a $2 bottle of wine. What would you expect? Give me a gallon of grape juice, a bag of sugar, an old trashcan, and a cool, dark place, and I could probably stumble upon their recipe after a few weeks.

Now there are some legitimate wines out there that have boxed varieties, but you won't find them for much less than $20, and they won't be in 5-liter bladders. The boxed wine concept is pretty smart. I mean, the wine is never exposed to oxygen like the case with conventional bottles. Therefore, you can "open" the wine and it would remain fresh for a long time.

My one suggestion is to know what you are getting into. If you pay $20 for 3 liters or so, you might be onto something. But if you pay $12 for 5 liters, you are probably just setting yourself up for a hangover.

Wine Lovers Unite

Last week I stumbled upon this site:

Must Love Wine

That link will take you to my profile. Must Love Wine is a social networking site (similar to Facebook and Myspace) that is specifically tailored to wine enthusiasts. You can create and customize a profile, chat, and post in forums.

From what I've seen so far, it's a great way to meet other wine enthusiasts online. I've only made a few forum posts, but I'm already learning a lot.

This site is just one of many similar sites. I know there are quite a few others, but so far, this is the only one I've joined. Have any of you seen any others?

The Start of My Wine Cellar

I don't know why I never did this sooner, but I've officially started collecting wine. Well, I probably didn't do it sooner because it's an expensive habit! I don't have much disposable (or drinkable) income as a poor college student.

A couple weeks ago, I got a great deal on two bottles of Chateau St. Michelle Syrah. These were a regular $12 on sale for $4 at the grocery store. I couldn't pass it up.

They are actually pretty tasty too. I love a good Washington wine. The only problem is that these bottles don't fit in the winerack that I made for myself.

Let's see how long I can go without drinking these, and more importantly, if I'm able to add to my collection anytime soon.

What's Wrong With My Wine?!!!

So I got near the bottom of a 3-day old bottle of shiraz, and this is what I found!

What are those black particles? Ewww. I wonder how much of that I drank...

Any ideas? I think the prime suspect has to do with the cork. It was pretty brittle. The corkscrew hardly worked on it. I don't know, Imagine an old rotten cork and that's pretty much it. However, the wine smelled and tasted fine. I'm not exactly sure that's what it should have tasted like, since I've never tried this one before. But it wasn't bad.

The bottle was vacuum sealed between uses.

Here's another angle of the mysterious particles:

Another Great Use for Wine

As if there weren't enough reasons to drink wine.

Well, I just found another one. I believe wine promotes good dental hygiene. How so?

It's simple. Red wine can give a slight purple tint to your teeth and cause you to brush that away, but it also dyes any gunk in between your teeth purple. This helps you to floss more thoroughly! Right?...

I would post a picture, but I don't think that is needed, nor is it, er, not disgusting. You get the idea.

Growler Lamp

I shamelessly copied this post from my other blog, The Collegiate Handyman. I think it relates somewhat to The Vino Newbie.

So I was tidying up the garage today, and I found this broken old table lamp. About two years ago, I got the cheapo lamp at a local evil big-box store. Within a month that thing broke. One of the "metal" legs gave out. So I pulled a MacGyver and attached the workings of the lamp, which amazingly still worked, to an empty beer bottle.

It was quite handy, but the 12 oz. beer bottle didn't serve as a good base. I didn't give it much use. Back to the garage this morning, and I'm wondering what I can do with it. Well, I decided to use it with a growler bottle which would serve as a much better base.

This is an easy project and here's how to do it...

You'll need the workings of a lamp. I discovered today that you can easily get everything you need at your local home improvement store. It's all very easy to put together if you have all the pieces. Of course, you'll need the growler bottle. Here's the tricky part, you'll want to be able to pop the lamp part off if you ever need to use the bottle. So the best solution is to attach the lamp part to a cork, which fits snugly in the bottle neck. So go get yourself a cork too.


Here, I had just drilled through the cork and attached the lamp part to it with a bolt. Be gentle when drilling through the cork, since it is a cork and all...


Depending on your lamp pieces, you may not have this problem. I had to find some way to attach the bulb holder to the shade holder. I used a cable tie and some hot-melt glue.

Here's the final product. Not too shabby, huh? It might be a good idea to fill the bottle with something to give it a solid base. Grain or hops would be appropriate. Beer is probably not a good idea.

Not shown is how I did the wiring. It's pretty simple. Just attach the wire to the two connections on the bulb holder part. Pretty easy stuff.

This is a fairly easy project and it sure won't take all day. In fact, this went very quickly and I didn't run into any problems at all.

I hope this inspires you.