There are a lot of people who swear by Blue Apron. The service delivers recipes and the perfect amount of ingredients for each of them to your door. The idea is you waste less food, because you don’t need to buy a whole head of lettuce, only to leave half wilting in the fridge. (Of course, those individual packages everything is wrapped in need to be accounted for, but that’s another story.)
Basically, the service is a grocery-store-phobe’s dream. But what if you want a little wine with dinner and don’t have any on hand? Why, you’d have to go out. But Blue Apron recently announced a solution to that problem with its wine-pairing program, Blue Apron Wine. It’s meant to make choosing the right wine for your fish dish less intimidating. The wines include pairing suggestions, tasting notes, and a description of the vineyard for each vintage.
The monthly shipment includes six 500-milliliter bottles for $66, with shipping but not tax figured into the price. “We wanted them to be perfect for two people to drink on an average weeknight without having to worry about not being able finish the bottle,” Matt Salzberg, Blue Apron’s CEO, tells Fast Company.
Basically, it’s unlikely you’ll get sloppy if you’re splitting the bottle. Here’s some math: A typical wine bottle is 750 milliliters, or 25.4 ounces. That’s just over five 5-ounce glasses, or two-and-half glasses each for two people, which, admittedly, is over the CDC recommendations on alcohol. Blue Apron’s 500-milliliter bottles contain nearly 17 ounces, or 8.5 ounces per couple. You’re still getting more than a five-ounce glass but probably not enough to make you regret it the next morning.
Blue Apron partnered with Terravant Wine Company to sell and ship the wines, many of which are limited-edition vintages.The first shipment will include a mix of red and white wines from Ventana Vineyard, Tierra Alta Vineyard, and Morgantini Vineyard. Right now, you can’t customize your preferences; everyone who signs up for the service will get the same wines.
Compared to a lot of other “wine clubs,” it’s not outrageously expensive, but you could still get a full bottle for around $11 at the grocery store and not make out too badly. And there are ways to keep your wine reasonably fresh if you want to be responsible and not finish a bottle on a school night, too.
