I enjoy the writing of William Sitwell and was sad to see him leave the his role as Editor of the Waitrose magazine, however this seems to have freed him up to write more widely on food & drink, so perhaps there is a silver lining in every cloud. Having said that his recent article on wine boxes has caused some consternation on the part of Catering.

I am nothing if not suggestible – a marketing department’s dream frankly. If it’s on the end of an aisle I’ll give it a go. So Mr Sitwell’s article in praise of wine boxes was like red rag to a bull and armed with this newly acquired intel I headed to the wine section of Waitrose. Not wanting to discriminate I returned home with a box of each colour, excited to undertake an extensive taste test.

I should at this point acknowledge that I had done this without consulting Catering at any point and to say he was put out doesn’t begin to cover it – frankly you’d have thought I had committed mass murder, the fuss he made. He pointed out that the boxes I had bought averaged £8.50 a bottle (I had already worked out the price per bottle) and he added he would like to wager that the wine we already had in the house in the £8 -9 per bottle range would be a damn sight nicer than the stuff in the boxes.

I tried to convince him of the recycling/eco credentials of the wine boxes, but he was having none of that – citing the fact that the prawns I had just bought were from Honduras, so there was more I needed to do before I tried to pull the eco-warrior card out.

I ignored him (well actually I blew several noisy rasberries) and set about the ostentatiously tasting the white wine (lots of noisy slurping) only to discover that it was what can only be described as a bit thin!

Still, not to be put off I then moved on to the pink – again I have had better and so finally all three of us (Nick & Catering decided to join in the final taste test) had a go at the red, which was the best of the three to be honest, very drinkable, but not what you’d call complicated. We had several glasses each before deciding again we have nicer bottles in the house at that sort of price.

I will say though the fact that you are pouring it from a box (well actually a cylinder in the case of the red & the white and a funky pouch for the pink) has a certain festival feel to it. It also allows you to have a glass of red, followed by white, followed by pink, without having to open & drink 3 bottles. Much as I hate to admit it though, Catering is probably right, it’s an expensive way to buy what is probably inferior wine to the stuff we usually drink – so apologies Mr Sitwell, but this time I have to disagree with you and will be sticking to the bottled variety.

Although Alex thinks what we really need to do is to extend the test to include the likes of the Aldi wine boxes and see how they match up in pound for pound comparisons. I begin to think this could turn into quite an interesting winter sport – the long winter evenings will simply fly by .