Blue Apron Wine Subscription Box Review – May 2017

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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 Bordeaux. Three of the wines were Californian, two Italian, and one French.

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. Data is your friend.

We tried these wines with dinner over several nights. First up was the Dancing Crow 2016(!!) 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; however, for some reason, the photo of this bottle makes it look like a pale rose, which it definitely isn’t. 

The Dancing Crow Sauvignon Blanc is very light yellow in the glass and light on the tongue. It is packed full of bright fruit flavors that lean toward the citrus elements.  It has a short, bright finish with just a bare hint of that peachiness and no sweetness at all, which is a little different from the Benzinger SB last month.

The Dancing Crow is very clean, very bright, and really a terrific example of the varietal.  It went well with our chicken sausage dogs and sauerkraut, and it would complement lots of foods, from fish and chicken to Chinese food.  This was a great start to our box of Blue Apron Wine this month! Serve it very cold, of course.

Next up was the Arco Di Traiano 2014 Falanghina.

Falanghina is a new varietal for me, which is always exciting. Falanghina is an old grape that has undergone a bit of a revival in Italy in the last decade or so. It makes simple, very drinkable wines that can complement plenty of food and also stands alone for a pre-dinner refresher.

Happily, this wine is relatively low in alcohol, 12.2%, so it won’t overwhelm you or your food. Similar to a Riesling, this wine has a greater heft to the body that you would expect from its pale greenish/yellow color. The Arc Di Traiano has a floral bouquet but leads with a really interesting almond flavor that lingers before turning flinty at the back end.

The finish is crisp and acidic. I didn’t really taste much citrus, despite what the tasting notes suggest. This is a tasty wine with more complexity than I expected. We had it with our Blue Apron turkey burgers, and the heavier body complemented the heartier fare. We started to drink this chilled, but it was better at cool room temperature, where that fascinating almond flavor really shines.  Thumbs up on this one!

Our last white was the Le P’tit Paysan 2015 Chardonnay.

I feel like Chardonnay has fallen out of favor with the cool crowd, but it’s still what you’re likely to find at a reception or banquet, and that stuff tends to be oaky and not all that amazing. Too bad, because good Chardonnay is soooo good.

Last month, the Lyrup Chardonnay was of the oakier variety, but this month’s Le P’tit Paysan is lean, crisp, and minerally. Not to worry, though–it still has that familiar Chardonnay aroma of apples and flowers. This wine is relatively light on the tongue, and the floral notes dominate the flavor; not much apple in here.

It finishes with a nice flintiness that leaves you ready for another sip. This Chard isn’t for everyone, but I really liked it. We had it with our other Blue Apron meal this month, the Pork Chops with apricot sauce, and it went beautifully with the seared meat and roasted veggies. We drank this off-chill, which is about right.

And on the seventh day, we started the red wines. First up was the Capp Heritage 2014 Merlot.

I have always liked Merlot, even back in the early aughts when everyone thought it was over. This Merlot comes from Napa, which is not all that common at this price point. The wine is a bright red-violet color with a nice heft in the mouth.

The tasting notes lean hard on the spice flavors in this wine, but I really felt like it had less spice and more olivey depth. It leads with the violet, but it deepens into a dark berry flavor and finishes with a really nice tannic bite.

This wine is well-balanced and delicious! We had it on a Sunday with pizza, and it went great with those big flavors.  We drank it at cool room temperature. Two thumbs up for this!

Another night, another bottle! This time we had the Ombra del Tempio 2014 Nero D’Avola.

This is another new varietal for me, which is awesome — being exposed to a wide range of wines is one of the cool things about a wine subscription. Nero D’Avola is a workhorse grape that makes lots of great table wines in Italy.

These wines can be sweetish and oaky, or lean, fruity, and spicy if they’re fermented in steel tanks, like this one was.  This wine, a gorgeous purple in the glass, has a strong cherry nose, and that flavor also leads on the first sip.

The body of this is pretty robust, but the fruit fades out into an herbal tartness but then comes back to finish with dried red fruit notes. This wine reminded me of a Syrah because of the interplay between fruit and herby spice. We had this with black beans and rice, which was okay, but the flavors of the wine worked against the flavors of the food. I’m not sure if it was the food pairing, or if this wine was a bit unbalanced. I’d love to try it again with a different meal, maybe a burger or skirt steak. Cool room temp for this.

Last on the list was the Chateau Champ D’Eymet 2015 Bordeaux.

I LOVE Bordeaux. Really, really, really, love it. It’s fairly light but has a nice round mouthfeel, it plays fantastically with lots of food, and it is fairly low in alcohol, so you can have more of it with less regret. Plus, it’s delicious.

This Bordeaux is typical in its color, a lovely purple that swirls nicely in the glass. It has a strong nose of dark fruit and a hint of spice that turns out to be a big part of the flavor. The woodsy spice of this is like hiking in Colorado (if you were hiking with a glass of wine, which I can’t say I recommend).

The dark fruit flavors round out the back of this wine, but it finishes crisply with more of that spice. There is decent acidity to this wine that keep the tannins in check and also makes it go beautifully with any meat. We had chicken mole tacos, and this really complemented the cocoa and spicy flavors of the food.  This is a great bottle of wine that disappeared with the tacos.  So good.  Cool room temp!

And that was our May 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. The recipe pairings are spot-on, and it’s a great way to try a wine or two you might not know about.

Have you tried Blue Apron Wine? What do you think about those adorable diminutive bottles? Tell us in the comments below!

Visit Blue Apron Wine to subscribe or find out more!

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