Blue Apron Wine is a subscription for people who love trying new wines as much as they love great food. You may be familiar with the Blue Apron Meal Delivery Kit subscription, which sends boxes of fresh ingredients to make exciting meals at home. The wine subscription is separate from the meal subscription, but it’s designed to complement it.
Here’s how it works: every month, for about $11 per bottle ($65.99/month, including shipping and tax), Blue Apron sends you 6 bottles of wine (3 white and 3 red/rose), plus tasting notes and pairing recommendations. The wines are selected to pair perfectly with the meals in the Blue Apron kits. The bottles are 500 ml, or 2/3 the size of a standard bottle, which, in addition to being adorable, means that you and your dining partner can enjoy your entire bottle with your meal without regretting that additional glass needed to finish a standard-sized bottle.
Blue Apron pairs with wineries around the world to bring a wide range of new and interesting wines to you each month. I love wine, and I love food, and I love everything about the idea of this subscription.
The wine comes securely packaged in a clever little box. Keep in mind that someone 21+ will need to sign for it. Everything is in great shape when it arrives, and the packaging is, happily, recyclable cardboard.
DEAL: You can try out your first box of Blue Apron dinners for $30 off with this link.
The wines this month are a nice range of varietals, from Sauvignon Blanc to Cabernet Sauvignon. Four of the wines were Californian, one Chilean, and one Australian.
If you’re wondering what a 2/3-sized bottle looks like, here is one of the bottles with a standard-sized bottle next to it. You’ll get about 3 1/2 glasses in a bottle, or a generous pour plus a top-off each if you’re with a partner.
Each box comes with a great collection of tasting notes. Blue Apron tells you a little bit about the winery and how the bottle was made, plus the region at large. Because, come on, you didn’t REALLY know where the Central Coast was, did you? The back of the card details the color, body, and structure of the wine, and also gives some thoughtful food pairings for each bottle. Wine snobs might turn their noses up at the pictures on these cards, but I think they’re great – wine is not scary, and tasting it should be fun and informative.
We tried these wines with dinner over several nights. First up was the Benzinger 2015 Sauvignon Blanc.
Sauvignon Blanc is a great food wine; it’s fruity and usually finishes with a bit of citrus that complements lots of different meals. Because these wines are bottled specifically for Blue Apron, the backs of all of them include some basic tasting notes, which I think is a great service.
These tasting notes are so good that I feel like you don’t even need me to tell you about the wine. The Benzinger Sauvignon Blanc is light yellow in the glass and light on the tongue. It has a bit of sweet citrus on the nose, and that’s carried through in the flavor, ending with a quick melony finish. This one tilts just a little bit sweet, but the citrus keeps it from being cloying. There’s no oak on this, of course, so it’s a nice, clean, easy-to-drink wine. We had this with verde chicken enchiladas, and the touch of sweetness balanced the spice of the food really well. This was a great start to Blue Apron Wine! Serve it very cold, of course.
Next up was the Scribner Clay 2014 Chenin Blanc.
Chenin Blanc gets a bad rap from cheap bottling and books about girls on trains. Good Chenin Blanc is crisp and refreshing, with fruit but not sweetness. This is a pretty good version! It’s very light-colored with a slightly weightier mouth-feel than you might expect, probably from the Reisling they added. It hits you in front with a floral nose, followed by a strong citrus flavor, and finishes brightly with more of that melon. The Scribner Clay was definitely in the same vein as the Benzinger Sauvignon Blanc, with a similar flavor profile, but this one tilted toward the floral and didn’t have the sweetness of the Sauvignon Blanc. We had this with roasted chicken breasts and sweet potatoes, and it all played together nicely. I preferred this to the Benzinger, but my husband liked the Benzinger better. We drank this cold, but it rounded out as it warmed up in the glass, which was enjoyable.
Our last white was the Lyrup 2015 Chardonnay.
If you’re like me, Chardonnay was probably your first introduction to grown-up wine, and it’s still what I drink with my mother-in-law. Chardonnay can be deliciously round and buttery from oak, or it can be lean and minerally (which is my preference). This version walks the line between the two, leaning slightly toward the heavier, oaky style. I think it’s a little brighter gold in the glass than the tasting card suggests, and has a very substantial mouth-feel. It has oak on the nose, and then spicy tropical fruit and more of that oak in the flavor. The finish lingers. If you like a fat, oaky Chardonnay, then you’ll be right at home here. It went pretty well with our pork tenderloin, and is definitely a crowd-pleaser. We drank it at cool room temperature.
We took the weekend off to drink some golf-appropriate cocktails while watching the Augusta tournament and came back to our red wines. First up was the 2015 Benzinger Merlot.
I have a soft spot in my heart for Merlot, which I drank a bunch of in college when I was trying to appear sophisticated. Sideways did a number on its popularity, but it’s making a comeback, and I, for one, am delighted. This version is silky smooth in the mouth and a beautiful garnet color in the glass, with a nice swirl of fuchsia to the edges. It leads with dark berries and then bleeds into spicy, herbal tones, before finishing with a tannic bite. This is a great food wine! We had it with pork tacos, and the body of the wine held up really well to the heft of the meat. We were really pleased with this one. We drank it at cool room temperature.
Another night, another bottle! This time we had the 2014 Highland Grenache.
It is really hard to go wrong with Grenache. It has something for everyone – a nice heft to the mouth-feel, some structured tannins and a brightness that pairs really well with food. This version is a medium red in the glass with a lighter mouth-feel than the Merlot. It has a strong nose of sweet berry, which, happily, did not come through in the taste. You can tell there’s some berry in it, but it has a nice acidity to balance the fruit, and the finish is short but spicy. It would go well with any kind of meat, but we had it with an omelette and salad, which was awesome. We drank it at room temperature, which was probably a touch warm. Cooler would be better for this.
We saved the cab for last, of course. On to the 2014 Cubic Cabernet Sauvignon!
So, let’s just be honest: $11 Cab is usually from California and it’s usually garbage. It’s usually heavy and sweetish and not worth your liver’s processing power. I was heartened, however, by the fact that this Cab is from Chile, not California. Chile is making some great wines, and they are often better quality than the price would suggest. This cab was dark purple in the glass and had a strong, spicy nose of dark fruit. As you would expect from a cab, it had a very substantial mouth-feel. The pruney, dark berry comes through heavily, and it finishes with an oaky spice that puts me in mind of an English murder mystery. The tannic bite to the back of this pulls it out of the cloying territory and it actually comes out pretty well-balanced. I was not expecting to like this, but I really did. We had Alfredo pasta and the heft of the wine stood up well to the food. This would be a good one to serve over blue cheese and chocolate-covered almonds at dessert, too. Room temp.
And that was our box of Blue Apron Wine! We were really pleased with the variety and quality of this wine subscription. If you’re a Blue Apron subscriber, I’d definitely give the Wine subscription a try. I’m looking forward to my next box, which will coincide with the arrival of my Blue Apron meal delivery. I can’t wait to try them together!
Have you tried Blue Apron Wine? What do you think about those adorable diminutive bottles? Tell us in the comments below!
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