I Never Expected One of My Favorite Wines Would Come Out of a Box

I spend a lot of my time thinking about drinks. During one of my more recent rabbit holes (prompted by some lingering questions I had about using up my bottle of Suze, in case you were wondering), I realized that I couldn't come up with another beverage category that’s had the same sort of profound glow-up as boxed wine. 

It’s true: What used to be the hallmark of college fraternity parties and disappointing office happy hours has, over the past few years, become a vessel for beautiful branding — a box has more surface area to decorate than a bottle! It’s also just a sustainable (lighter packaging and lower carbon emissions relative to glass), thoughtful way to serve more wine to more people. Especially in the case of Ami Ami, which is my absolute favorite boxed wine.

Vin Blanc

Ami Ami, which offers a red and white wine in cheerful gallon-sized cartons (totalling ten glasses per box) inspired by vintage Campari branding, is probably not what you’d expect of a boxed wine. It wasn’t what I expected. But I love it, and for more reasons than one. The first is how long it stays drinkable once opened — a box of Ami Blanc was delicious at first pour, and tasted surprisingly crisp yet smooth (no signs of vinegar) three weeks later. That’s not something I’ve been able to find with a bottle, unless I Coravin it. 

Then there’s fridge ergonomics, a reality I often grapple with while trying to avoid the miserable task of trying to fit bottles horizontally and vertically into an already bursting shelf. The box is neither too tall nor too wide to fit into my fridge easily.

Vin Rouge

But my absolute favorite part of Ami Ami is how well its blends lend themselves to many of my favorite recipes — whether they call for a splash of wine or not. Recently, when cooking risotto, I decided to subscribe to the adage of, “only cook with wine that you’d drink” with admittedly low expectations —  I’d been burned by overly acidic, sweet, oaky boxed white wines in the past, and I quickly realized that Ami Ami’s Vin Blanc was nothing like that. Its approachable blend of Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc proved to be the right ingredient to add a little kick of citrus and complexity to my dish. The next day, I added a splash to deglaze some caramelizing onions to add on top of a rather decadent avocado toast; before heading out of town last week, I used half a cup from the same box to zhuzz up the sauce for my “clean-out-the-fridge” spaghetti.  

While I haven’t yet incorporated Ami Ami’s Vin Rouge made entirely with Syrah from the south of France into my beef stew, I’ve been enjoying tricking the Syrah skeptics in my life with small glasses of this surprisingly bright, blackberry-forward wine. In fact, I never quite realized how comforting it would be to have a dependable house wine that’s ready to meet me wherever I’m at, whether I’m spending a rainy Sunday cooking a multi-hour meal, having friends over for impromptu post-event drinks, or just want a little something to sip on while I finish up a puzzle on my own.

I’ll be keeping a box of Ami Ami in my fridge for months to come, and honestly, I don’t expect it to last long enough for me to test whether it’s still drinkable after six weeks. 

At the time of publishing, the price was $30.