Is the $95 Tablas Creek box wine the key to easing out glass bottles?

Or – and more likely — is it just one more small step in doing what needs to be done to glass?

Last week, I wrote that consumers weren’t all that interested in alternative wine packaging, and that the 750-ml glass bottle was just fine, thank you very much.

So what blows up the cyber-ether at almost the same time? The news that Tablas Creek’s $95 box wine sold out in hours – a development that many heralded as the first sign that box wine was now acceptable for something other than the stuff that old ladies with cats buy.

The Toronto Globe & Mail, hardly sensational, asked: “Is a box wine revolution on the way?” And an editor I work with, almost as cynical as I am, said, “Jeff! We need a box wine story! It has arrived!”

It turns out that Jason Haas of Tablas Creek, as smart and innovative as anyone in the wine business, was almost as surprised at all of the excitement as I was.

“I thought it would be successful,” he emailed me, “but the magnitude of the reaction still took me by surprise — both when we announced it on our blog (with the most comments a blog piece I’ve written has ever received), and again with some of the highest-ever engagement with the posts about it on social media, and again when we sent it out and it sold out in four hours.”

Haas says he wanted to put some of his 2021 Patelin de Tablas Rose into a 3-liter box (the equivalent of four bottles) to see if there would be demand for expensive box wine. Box wine has never been much more than a niche in the wine business, accounting for about 10 percent of sales. And, for the most part, its wines cost no more than the equivalent of $8 a bottle, and usually much less. The Tablas Creek rose works out to about $24 a bottle – very pricey indeed for a box.

So when it sold out in four hours, tremendous enthusiasm. Many of us want to believe we can find a way past the 750-ml bottle and its 18^th century technology, and no one wants to believe that more than I do. I’ve practically made a career writing about it.

But the media, Winestream and otherwise, overlooked a variety of caveats in covering the story:

• There were just 300 boxes of the wine. Selling out is impressive, but it’s not like it was the winery’s entire production of 2021 rose. Or a Big Wine product.

• Haas says the winery’s mailing list numbers 40,000 people, and “more than that through our social media channels.” Call that total 100,000 to make the math simple, and a basic business formula predicts sales of up to 1,000 boxes.

• Tablas Creek is well known and highly respected; that its followers wanted to support the box is not surprising. Another producer, with less of a reputation (and they know who they are), may not have been as successful.

• The winery didn’t try to sell the boxes through the three-tier system – which, to my mind, was the smartest decision in the entire marketing process. I’m guessing most wholesalers and retailers would have said, “Nope, not a good idea, don’t do it.”

None of this is to denigrate what Haas did or to say he shouldn’t have done it. As noted, we need to find an alternative bottle. But one small success is not a victory, and not when it’s running up against survey after survey that says what the survey last week said.

Because, as winemaker Charles Bieler told me recently, glass bottles aren’t going away just because we want them to. And Bieler, who makes wine in kegs and TetraPaks as well as bottles, knows more about than most.

So credit to Tablas Creek for taking a much needed small step. Let’s hope someone else has the courage of Haas’ convictions and takes the next step to help the box become as common as the bottle.