Black Box Sauvignon Blanc 2008 NZ

Black Box New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc 2008

Last weekend I volunteered (for the 3rd year) to be a “wine ambassador” for the Camp Good Days Wine Auction and Dinner up in downtown Rochester.  This is such a great event for 2 reasons.  One, is that is raises a LOT of money for wonderful children and even adults to attend the camp down on Keuka Lake and “escape” their illnesses for a week.  Two, I get to try a BOATLOAD of great wines!  All the wines we pour (and I will say that there are hundreds) are wines entered in the Finger Lakes International Wine Competition.  I am one of the lucky few who get to pour wine out in the VIP tent before the dinner gets underway.  This is basically where we pour the best of the best and try to get all the notoriously high bidders and sponsers a bit tipsy before dinner and the auction gets crankin’.  See, THATS how you raise lot’s of money…

So, I pick the table (there were 4 stations) that actually has a box wine at it.  I was SOOO excited to see this as I am a box wine connoisseur, you see.  It was the “Black Box SB from New Zealand 2008″ and it won a double gold at the competition.  The Black Box used to be sourced from California and the last time I tasted it, I did NOT like it at all!  The new, uh, bagging/boxing of it… I can’t call it a bottling here, uses New Zealand grapes (hello- always should have been using grapes from there!) and has that nice grassiness to it.  Not too much, its subtle. 

I had a lot of fun “making” people try the box wine, especially since these were people who perhaps didn’t usually buy box wines.  Or, they didn’t want their neighbors seeing it.  Let me tell you, that night I changed a lot of minds.  But there was also a lot of, “Oh Black Box!  I’ve wanted to try that!”  At $6.25 a bottle (broken down from the $24.99 retail price for 3L), you really can’t ask for a better price on a delicous SB from New Zealand, no matter how much money you have!