"One of the joys of being working class is that you get to bypass that traumatic bottle/half-bottle/wine the next day dilemma."

"Box wine just keeps on giving. I imbibe my cardBordeaux while doing counted cross stitch. I figure as long as I can still count, I've not gone over-bordeaux."

Comment on a Wall Street Journal article titled "Drinking Alone: A Bad Idea or a Toast to Oneself? Is imbibing solo pathetic? Antisocial? A sign of �a problem�? Lettie Teague talks to some experts, tips her glass to all the wine drinkers who decline to drink alone and concludes: nope." That title fails to include Teague's main concern: A full bottle of wine is too much for one person to drink, and opened wine supposedly gets significantly worse by the next day.

One friend, a middle-aged single male, will open (almost) any wine in his cellar for friends but not a single bottle for just himself. An unshared bottle is a waste of money, he said, likening the act to buying �an entire ham� when he just wanted a sandwich....

As for the notion that an open bottle isn�t quite as good on day two or three, I�ve found this to be both true and false. Many wines will flatten, and the fruit may fade, after the bottle has been opened. But some wines�reds that are big and tannic and/or young�get softer and more accessible with a bit of time and air....

I always drink wine with dinner, even if I�m dining alone.... And I don�t necessarily drink something cheap just because I�m dining alone. I�ll open a good bottle as readily for myself as I would for anyone else. A good wine is likely to be better than a cheap wine on the second day anyway....

Teague considers the alternative of buying half bottles but never mentions box wine. "Cardbordeaux," by the way, it old slang. I'd never heard it before, but the Urban Dictionary definition goes back almost 10 years. It's replete with "Simpsons" jokes about a woman who drinks too much. A working-class woman. And that's a hint of how the culture has prevented the better technology from reaching higher-class women like Lettie Teague, women who will spend a lot of money on wine but only want one glass a day. The method of effectively delivering less got associated with drinking more, with lame jokes like Ralph Wiggum saying "You look like my Mommy after her box of wine." That's like something dispensed from a box labeled "Jokes."