Since today is a day when most of us will be serving or drinking wine, I feel it appropriate to talk about packing wine on a backpacking trip.

While out in the blogosphere (the blogging universe of the many blogs and entries on the web) earlier this week, I came across an entry on Upadowna.com where Yeti writes about portable wine that you easily pack in your backpack.

French Rabbit Wines

Many of us like to have a glass of wine with dinner at home but being able to do this on the trail usually involves lugging a bottle and corkscrew in our backpacks or pouring the wine into a flask and live with a taste that is not 100%.  With packing a bottle it also sucks that the trash is heavy as well. I remember when I completed my last peak for the Catskill 3500 Clubalmost 15 years ago, I poured a bottle of Robert Mondavi Chardonney into a plastic flask and brought it up the mountain to celebrate. It was only a day hike on a cool day but the taste was not as good as serving it at home.  I know the wine could have tasted really funky on a summer backpacking trip. (In hindsight, I should have brought up a good Cabernet instead.)

You can try take along a wine box with you but most of them are 4 liters and that is too much wine for a small group unless the goal of the trip is get drunk and hike hungover the next day. Also the Mylar bag can break so forget about the boxed wine.

What Yeti wrote about are wines from French Rabbit and Bandit wines from Three Thieves. These wines come in practical one liter containers that are made of Tetra material which is about 3% of the weight of an ordinary bottle according to French Rabbit. The package is layered polyethylene, foil and paperboard in a design that is collapsible so it is easy to put in your garage bag to pack out. These wines even come in individual wine boxes , sort of like adult juice boxes. 

Three Thieves Bandit Wine

I have to say that I haven’t tried Bandit or French Rabbit yet but I have used the products from Target. Besides the Wine Cubes, Target sells their brand of wine in the individual serving tetra packs (adult juice boxes). The thing about the Target wines is the low quality of the wine itself. I think one of the wines even states that it is wine with other natural flavors whatever that means.  I use a small box of Merlot in a dinner recipe I make on the trail but I don’t ever serve it to guests because of the taste. Yeti has given me incentive to go out and try Bandit and French Rabbit. You can order Bandit on line through the Three Thieves website and I think I’ve seen the French Rabbit wines at Target. ( In Arizona that is, the liquor laws are pretty cool out here.)

Enjoy but remember to drink responsibly.