Full disclosure: I helped found a boxed wine company. When we started, we believed that boxed wine was the future of millennial wine drinking. But since then, that belief has grown into certainty.
It's not only boxed wine that's the way of the future. As long as millennials continue guzzling wine, canned and tap wines are also set to explode. But the biggest wine boom will come from the box, and here's why:
We're mobile. We've grown up unfettered by any physical or virtual constraints. We have the ability to do everything and go everywhere, and we're always on the move. A box allows for mobile drinking. In fact, it encourages it.
We're spontaneous and social. Our virtual connectedness has created a generation that strives to be social, online and off. While a bottle can serve 1-3 people, the average box holds 4 bottles-worth of wine, making it better equipped for an impromptu gathering of twenty of your closest friends.
We don't make as much money as our parents did. This point has been belabored enough, but the consequences continue to be felt. Since cardboard is a cheaper and lighter alternative to glass, boxes can be shipped and sold for less...allowing boxed wine companies can sell quality wines at wallet-friendly prices.
We're new school. We've chosen Brooklyn over the Upper East Side, freelance over finance, and plaid as the unofficial uniform of the 20-something. To our generation, the mystique of French Bordeaux is perceived as pretension. We like what's kitschy, eco-friendly, nostalgic and retro. And boxed wine fits the bill.