Posted: June 8th, 2009 - 1:33pm by Doug Powell

That’s a relief. I love my vino in a box, or from a box. In Maubisson, France, I’d bike to the store, and the dude would fill up a 2 litre bottle with Bordeaux from a box. Awesome.

Gary J. Pickering, senior author of a study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry says that for some reason the researchers can't explain, wines stored in Tetra Pak-brand cartons had the lowest levels of unwanted chemicals, called methoxypyrazines.

One possibility, Pickering said, is that the chemicals escape through the carton's innermost layer, made of polyethylene, and then attach to an adjacent layer made of aluminum foil.

The best storage method for preventing that problem, the study found, was a bottle sealed with a screw-cap - which, like the cardboard carton, has some connoisseurs wrinkling their refined noses.