Australia’s unofficial national drink is trending. Can we get over the stigma of the goon sack, and get back in the box?
More than 50 years after it was first invented by a bloke named Thomas Angove in South Australia, boxed wine is back in fashion. It’s come a long way. Once the domain of cheap drops and drinking games, there are now specialty “bag-in-box” wines selling out in bottle shops across the country, produced by a coterie of Australia’s trendiest winemakers. Technology has advanced, yes, but it’s popular for the same reasons it was a smash hit in the first place: boxed wine is cheap, portable and convenient. You can buy three litres, take it home, and it’ll keep in the fridge for four weeks once it’s opened. The only difference is now, according to Dr Mardi Longbottom, a senior researcher and viticulturist at the Australian Wine Research Institute, the “quality of wine can be exceptional”.
Last year, top Sydney restaurant Icebergs kicked things off when it collaborated with Giorgio de Maria Fun Wines to launch its biodynamic house red in a two-litre box. It was poured in-house for $9 a glass, while the cask itself sold at sister venue the Dolphin Hotel’s bottle shop for $55. When it sold out, quickly, the team followed up with a 10-litre box of skin-contact orange. There are now several plans for white and rose varieties. Elsewhere, 1.5-litre “bagnums” of natural wine from Australian producers Jilly and Le Grappin sell so quickly they’re almost impossible to track down and Italian producer Carussin’s three-litre boxes of natural Barbera red have become big sellers in bottle shops across the country. Such is the demand, specialty Australian booze shops P&V Merchants and DRNKS are now developing bag-in-box varieties of their own (Joel Amos, owner of the latter, said his customers were “smashing through it”).
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