Premier Liquor consists of three independently owned and operated wine stores in Amherst, Williamsville, and Orchard Park. With the largest selection of premium wines and premier spirits, each Premier wine store boasts something for everyone. For everything else, there's Premier Gourmet, a gourmet food and specialty store like no other! Premier Wine & Spirits Premium Wine & Spirits Prestige Wine & SpiritsDiscover recipes and pairings from Black Box Wines. We've been awarded 50 Gold Medals, but who's counting?For years wine packed into bags and boxes have been given a bad rep: That they're cheap, piss-poor quality and not worth your time unless you're looking to get drunk for next to nothing. It's true that they are cheaper than their bottled counterparts, but the long-held notion that box wine tastes bad is purely myth. Though the packaging isn't as elegant as the pretty wine labels wrapped around slender green glass (or even portable wine cans), bags and boxes are actually an ideal set-up for wine because it seals out light and air, keeping it fresher for longer—even after it's been opened.

In fact, in Scandinavia, half of all wine sold is bagged and boxed. And now, according to Forbes, sales are starting to rise in the U.S. It seems the stateside stigma is finally starting to dwindle. So while box wine might have once been relegated to drinkers looking for a cheap buzz and not high-quality wine, there are plenty of premium options that are easy on your wallet and keep an imbibing crowd happy. Now's the time to start drinking outside of the college-grade vino box with some of our favorite cardboard-container wines:1. BanditThe theory behind Bandit is putting more time and money into the quality of the wine and not on glass and corks. Sold in 1-liter and 500-mL sizes, the California wines include pinot grigio, chardonnay, merlot, cabernet, and a red wine blend. 2. Big HouseNodding to its location near a correctional facility, a.k.a "the Big House" or "the slammer," this winery offers fruit-forward wines with subtle hints of oak, self-proclaiming them as "so good, they're almost criminal."

Stock up on the red or white blends, or opt for the pinot noir, zinfandel, or chardonnay. 3. Black BoxIdeal for single servings and big bashes, Black Box is available in both portable pouches and large boxes that hold four 750-mL bottles' worth of wine. best wine italy 2014And with 10 varietals—ranging from cabernet sauvignon and malbec to pinot grigio and riesling—there's a "juice box" for everyone.beer and wine drink recipes 4. Bota BoxThis award-winning brand is named for the Spanish canteens that were originally used to carry wine. best red wine 2009It's offered in three sizes: 3-liter boxes, 1.5-liter "bricks," and "mini" 3-glass cartons.best red wine on long island

5. FuoristradaImported from Italy, these Tuscan and Sicilian wines are made with organic grapes and are poured into Tetra Pak cartons—which use 54 percent less energy, create 80 percent less greenhouse gasses, and produce 60 percent less solid waste volume than a 750-mL glass bottle.best way to glitter wine glasses 6. NuvinoEach of the wines in this juice-pouch–looking line hails from a different region, including Chile, South Africa, Australia, and Argentina. buying wine online in njThe single-serving bag is sealed with a screw cap, which makes it ideal for on-the-go drinking or large-scale parties where a stocked cooler beats a punch bowl.food and wine best tea 7. WineberryShipped in a wooden crate, Wineberry vino makes more of a statement than the traditional cardboard cube. best cities for wine in france

Plus, you have a choice of fancy shmancy-sounding varietals from the Bordeaux, Burgundy, Provence and Rhône regions of France. Follow Delish on Instagram. 6 Things Vanessa Hudgens Does To Get A Flat Stomachbest value quality red wine This 3-Year-Old Packed The Most Amazing Lunch Ever You Can Make A Unicorn Frappuccino At Home The 9 Most Genius Foods Ever Featured On Shark Tank Marilyn Monroe's Former Home Can Officially Be Yours 8 Things You Need To Know Before Shopping At Aldi I Had This For Breakfast Every Day for a Week and Lost 3 Pounds The Internet Is Freaking Out Over Avocado Chocolate This Wedding Dress Cake Looks Creepily Like A Wedding Dress This Mom's Emotional Story Is The Reason Why You Shouldn't Force Your Kids To Share If you’re hosting a holiday party this year, you may be eyeing the wine aisle with consternation — and not just because .

Wine is expensive, man. Especially if you need enough of it to lubricate a big family dinner. ( especially in an election year.)But if your concerns have you heading hunchbacked in shame toward the back of the store where they hide the boxed vino, perk up.Boxed wine is actually a great Penny Hoarder option, and it doesn’t have to taste terrible. Aside from the obvious advantage of being cheaper, buying boxed wine is actually smart for a host of other reasons — so much so that some vintners are starting to sell even their in cardboard.Well, first of all it’s nigh impossible for wine to go bad in a box, either before or after opening. That’s because of the vacuum-sealed bag the box — which you may or may not remember from college. It keeps the wine almost entirely out of contact with oxygen, which means you’ll never open a box to find your wine’s already turned.(This is true, too, of the almost-equally maligned screw cap… but that closure doesn’t share the box’s ability to keep the wine fresh after opening.)

And that cute little spigot? It works to maintain the wine’s vacuum seal, even after you’ve had a glass (or five), which means you can keep an open box of wine on the counter for weeks instead of just a couple of days, like with a bottle.And although it’s true that cork allows wines that need it to age with grace, most easy-drinking table quaffs don’t benefit much from sitting in a bottle, or will be drunk too young for it to matter. Boxed wine also carries a much and you can take it into glass-free zones, like campsites. But enough about why it’s awesome: Which one tastes best? Eight adventurous TPH staffers and I tasted seven boxed wines, ranging from $11.46 to $21.99, to figure out which wine we wouldn’t be embarrassed to serve at a party… after sneaking it into a fancy decanter, of course. To control the experiment (and our day-drinking-for-work budget), we kept our tasting to a single varietal, or type of grape: cabernet sauvignon. We can’t say for certain that our findings will hold across varietals.

Maybe our least favorite brand just happens to flub its cab, but does a bang-up job on pinot noir or sauvignon blanc.But even so, some of our results were pretty surprising — and they might just help you nail down those holiday dinner plans. Here’s what we tasted, started with the cheapest option:We started with the bottom of the barrel — or rather, the steel tank. (Let’s be real: Walmart’s proprietary boxed wine has probably never seen a day in oak.)But for its price, this wine put on a pretty good show… although I’d never have called it cabernet if I’d known better. It was way too light in color and had almost no body.Although the box boasts the wine’s won “90+ medals,” it fails to say from whence those designations were awarded. There’s also no indication of where the grapes were grown. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯Many staffers noted a significant presence of acid, but without much tannin to back it up, this wine came across as a little sour. There was a fruity presence in the blueberry or blackberry zone… but the wine’s claim to “a hint of toasty oak” was a stretch.

But staff writer Lisa Rowan called it “totally drinkable,” and even senior editor Heather van der Hoop, who grew up near a wine region and thus has fairly lofty standards, said it’s “the kind of wine [she] would drink… after [she’d] already had a bottle.” And more than one taster found the flavor oddly reminiscent, scratching their heads until the memory hit them. “It’s like church wine!” exclaimed editor Caitlin Constantine.So it might be a keeper if you prefer your drink, as email marketing specialist Colleen Rice put it, with “shades of Catholicism.”Verdict: Nobody’s favorite… but surprisingly drinkable for such a cheapie. (And possibly what they keep behind the altar!) Is there such a thing as a “classic” boxed wine? If there is, this is it. For better or worse, Franzia’s reputation precedes it. But while this Chilean cabernet’s color and body are a closer to legit, tasters found it less flavorful than the less-expensive Oak Leaf. Like, a lot less flavorful.

As van der Hoop put it, “It doesn’t taste like anything! I could be drinking water right now.” Most also found it less smooth on the palate, too, noting that it was acrid on the finish.I was already skeptical before I read the box, which claims it pairs with beef stew, chocolate truffles and “dinner party.” That’s not a pairing, Franzia! Purchases of this wine do, however, support the . So I guess there’s that.Verdict: This one has a (bad) reputation for a reason. If you need a box this cheap, pick Oak Leaf instead.Another cabernet out of Chile, Corbett Canyon also designates itself an “award-winning wine”… without specifying which awards it’s talking about. It also claims to be “Full-Bodied with Classic Hints of Cherry, Vanilla and Toasty Oak,” and yes, all those words are capitalized. Our tasters had an ambivalent response to this one. Some said it had even less flavor than Franzia, and almost everyone agreed they could taste less fruit — in my own tasting notes, I couldn’t distinguish even a single one.

Three staffers said they straight-up didn’t like it.But two called it “easy drinking,” noting a nutty, smoky flavor.“If you put this in a decanter on your table, people wouldn’t be like, this is definitely from a box,” said van der Hoop. “Especially if it was the second thing you served.” In fact, it was her runner-up favorite.“It’s pretty drinkable,” agreed director of media relations Lizabeth Cole — whose hospitality degree means she knows a thing or two about wine.Verdict: Not as much of a crowd-pleaser, but a pretty solid option on the cheap end of the scale. The first wine we tried that actually had a vintage, this California cabernet sauvignon actually resembled cabernet sauvignon. It has a medium ruby color and lives up to its promise of being “medium-bodied,” and it was the first wine we tasted with any noticeable tannin at all.It was also the first in the lineup with complex flavors. Staffers tasted black cherry, blackberry, plum, smoke and even green tea notes.

The majority enjoyed it well enough, though only our photographer, Samantha Dunscombe, deemed it her favorite.Plus, as Cole mentioned, “the box is really cute.” (I mean, she the head of our PR department.) And importantly, the box actually where its awards come from: Its 2013 cabernet sauvignon was voted a Best Buy by Wine Enthusiast; ditto its 2013 Nighthawk dark red blend, which was actually second overall on the list .  I would, however, love to meet the person responsible for the fanciful description of the finish as “boisterous.” As our staff writer Lisa Rowan remarked, the drinker’s might be boisterous upon finishing a bottle… but it seems like a stretch for a descriptor of the wine itself.Verdict: A good middle-of-the-road wine to serve as a base for sangrias or a simple table wine.With its opaque, almost maroon color and a nose of tobacco and campfire, this boxed wine from Valle Central, Chile promised to be a whole lot bigger than some of its cheaper counterparts.And sure enough, it delivered — but not necessarily in a good way.

“That is cough syrup,” concluded van der Hoop. “It’s kind of like purple drank,” said Rowan. Undeniably flavorful, this wine had a medium-plus body with notes of blackberry and vanilla, a classic characteristic of oak. But email marketing specialist Colleen Rice and I thought the vanilla characteristic tasted painted-on, like the vintner had dumped vanilla extract in the barrel. And while the dark fruit flavors were big and jammy, they also came across as overstated and artificial.“It’s not worth turning my teeth purple,” said Rice.Black Box wines have won many awards from Wine Enthusiast, including Gold Medals and Best Buys. And it was certainly a denser and juicier wine than most of the others on this list — so if that sounds like your jam (get it?), it might work for you.Verdict: Although apparently highly rated and relatively expensive, our staffers weren’t on board.Ding, ding, ding: We have a winner! Although it lacked the tannin and acid typical of a cab, this red out of Valle Central, Chile, was easy to drink.

It had notes of cherry, plum and blackberry pie, though many tasters thought it was more woodsy or smoky than fruit-forward. Medium-bodied and smooth, it inspired several staffers to help themselves to a second pour.“If you gave me a glass of this, I wouldn’t think it was boxed,” admitted Rowan. And editor Caitlin Constantine decided it’s going into her home rotation. Verdict: This was the most well-loved boxed wine amongst our staff and is a great option for an easy-drinking table red. And although it’s on the pricier end, it’s still a great deal: $20 for the equivalent of four standard bottles. The most expensive of the bunch, this California cab brought all the traditional characteristics to the table: It displayed notes of vanilla, blackberry, plum and dark cherry, and arrived at the classic cassis, or blackcurrant, flavor. While it had the most tannin of the bunch, it was low in acid and was much jammier and fruitier than the House Wine. But those black fruit flavors weren’t as cloying and artificial as we found Black Box to be — it was cherry, but “ cough-syrup cherry,” as Rowan specified.