Blue Apron Wine Subscription Box Review - July 2017

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.

Blue Apron Wine now allows you to select your wines! You can go all white, red, or mix it up. You could even do a rose box, because #SayHeyRose. I went with the default selection, which included two whites, a rose, and three reds.

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 standard 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.

In place of the individual cards, Blue Apron is now sending a nice little booklet with all the wines offered in July. Neat to see what else you might have gotten!

I took the whole box to my annual book club summer afternoon party. Day-drinking and chatting about books — hard to beat that! First up was the As de Copas 2014 Verdejo/Sauvignon Blanc blend.

Spanish wines are often a terrific value. Sauvignon Blanc is rapidly becoming America’s “go-to” white wine, but blends of it aren’t seen as often in quality bottles. In this case, the Verdejo adds a nice body and zip to the citrusy Sauvignon Blanc.

The As de Copas is very light greenish-yellow, with a strong nose of citrus and herbal greenery. The mouthfeel is a tad heavier than you would get from a straight Sauvignon Blanc, though the flavor is gone almost before you’ve assessed it. There’s lots of citrus here, but also a hint of pineapple and more of those herbal flavors, which the tasting notes claim to be “pea tendril.” Having never eaten a pea tendril, I couldn’t say. It doesn’t taste like peas, at any rate. This is a very clean, fresh wine that would make a lovely starter over light apps. It would go great in a picnic basket, too. We drank this cold, but not icy. It’s so light that too much chill would overwhelm the flavors.

Next up was the Cold Heaven 2016 Viognier.

You don’t see a lot of California Viognier, but Cold Heaven has made a little project of it. That’s my favorite part of a wine subscription — getting to try wines you don’t always reach for on the shelf.

This wine, no lie, smells like the floral department of Whole Foods. Which is not a bad thing. Honeysuckle, rose, lily — it’s all in this glass. The color even looks a bit green, like it’s been soaking flowers. The body is rather heavy in the mouth, and the flavor is full of sweet fruit — orange and melon. The floral notes come back in on the finish, which is long and complex. This is a wine to think about while you drink it. It’s just on the sweet side, with all that fruit, but it’s not sticky. This went well with some of the weightier cheeses we ate, especially the brie. You could also drink it to moderate a spicy dish, like red curry. We drank it off-chill.

On to the rose everyone had been eyeing while we tried the whites, the Airfield Estates 2016 Rose of Cabernet Sauvignon.

Blue Apron had a fun variety of roses to offer in July, from bone-dry Provence styles to juicier, sweeter styles like this one.

The Airfield Estates is a salmon pink, lighter than pictured in the book. Like most roses, it doesn’t have much of a nose. It’s pretty weighty in the mouth for a rose, with lots of fruity berry flavor. This wine tips over into sweetish, though it’s not cloying like that junk wine you drank in college. This is an easy-to-drink wine and would go great with whatever you’re serving in your backyard. Icy cold for this one.

On to the reds! Just because it’s summer doesn’t mean you have to drink white wine. First up was the Archival 2014 Petite Sirah.

Petite Sirah, not to be confused with its cousin, Syrah, is usually a big, bold wine that can be overwhelmingly alcoholic and heavy. This bottling is a leaner version that is easier to pair with food.

This wine is dark, dark purple in the glass with a medium nose of red fruit and baking spices. It has a weighty mouthfeel, but also a relatively high tannic finish, so it doesn’t feel heavy. The berry flavors lead before moderating into a restrained finish of spice, with a bit of earthy funk underlying it to keep things interesting. The tannic bite is prominent but not overwhelming. Honestly, I was afraid this was going to be a mess, but it is so beautifully balanced that everything works together to make a really delicious wine. This wine would complement any red meat, especially beef. Cool room temp for this one.

Our next red was the Palmina 2015 Sangiovese.

If Sangiovese makes you think of an Italian restaurant with red-and-white-checkered tablecloths, that’s because Chianti is at least 75% Sangiovese. I really enjoy (good) Chianti, so I was excited to see this in my box.

This wine is a lovely red-violet color in the glass, with a good swirl of fuchsia to go with its moderate 14.5% ABV. There are plums and cherries on the nose, and that carries into the medium-bodied flavor. The fruit is tempered immediately by an herby tang, and it finishes clean with a pretty strong tannic bite. This is really delicious wine! I admit that I snuck this out of the box before I brought it to my book club, and I had it with my Blue Apron meal on Saturday. It went beautifully with my burger, but it would also go nicely with any tomato-based sauce (like for pasta, natch). I drank this at cool room temperature.

Last on the list was the Venge Vineyards Scout’s Honor 2015 Proprietary Red.

According to the tasting notes, this “Scout’s Honor” bottling is what Venge Vineyards made to serve to guests in its tasting room. It’s pretty fun to see this in the Blue Apron box, because it averages $30+ for a full-sized bottle. Great to give it a try in the subscription without the commitment of a full bottle.

This wine is supposed to be as “Napa” as possible — a big, bold, high-ABV red wine. And it is! It’s very dark purple (though not quite as dark as the Archival), with a heavy swirl in the glass and a mouthfeel to match. The nose is all dark berries and vanilla/oak, and that is the flavor, too. It is so very big and jammy that it comes off almost sweet. It has a long finish but not much tannin to it, so it lingers a bit. This is a giant wine, and several of my book club friends really loved it. It’s not exactly my style, but I could see enjoying it with BBQ or a mushroom/swiss cheeseburger. It needs something big in flavor to match its power. I think cool room temperature for this one.

And that was our July box of Blue Apron Wine! There were some cool wines in the box this time, and it was really fun to share it with friends. That’s what wine is for, after all! We have been 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.

By the way, Blue Apron has a new system for pairing its wines and its food subscriptions, somewhat like you might have seen in nicer grocery stores — the wines are categorized by type (crisp & minerally, plush & fruity, etc.) and then that symbol shows up on the food recipes. Pair any wine of the recommended type to the food, and voila — you have a great meal!