Beetles taste better in boxed wines

Wines in a box are already a great idea for many types of consumers -- ironically, usually the exact people demographically who scorn the idea.

Now there's yet another piece of evidence in their favor. It turns out that if a winery grinds up Asian lady beetles -- accidentally, we hope -- into the wine, the results taste better out of a bag-in-box.

You probably think I'm making this up, but it was in The Economist, which is about as respectable a source as one can get without a byline.

I'll spare you the chemistry details. I'd rather talk about the types of people who should be drinking their beetles 'n wine from a box.

If you buy one type of inexpensive wine by the case, and are happy drinking the same brand every day for a week, you ought to be buying wine in a box. It's cheaper and it lasts far better once it's open.

If you only want one or two glasses of wine per night, but you drink every night, you ought to consider wine in a box.

That said, both of those groups of consumers tend to be over 40 -- the exact consumer group that, in the US, is most resistant to wine in a box as somehow not as romantic as a bottle with a cork closure.

Folks, there ain't no romance to generic cheap wine. Get over it. If you're paying $7 a bottle or less for wine, it's already machine-harvested and completely machine-processed to save on labor costs. Whether you like it or not, it likely has some Asian lady beetles in it. You might as well neutralize their alkyl-methoxypyrazines. (That's technical talk for making beetles taste better.)

They'll never be as delicious as green-bottomed ants, though. But that's a topic for another day.