Box wine
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A box wine (or wine cask[1]) is a wine packaged in a bag, usually made of aluminium PET film or other plastics, and protected by a box, usually made of standard corrugated cardboard. The bag is sealed by a simple plastic tap, which is revealed by tearing away a small perforated panel on the box, and used to dispense the wine. The most common sizes are 1.5, 3, 4 and 5 litre.
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[edit] History
The wine cask was invented by Tom Angove of Angove's, a winemaker from Renmark, South Australia, and patented by the company on April 20, 1965.
The wine cask is now facing a new competitor with Tetra Pak introducing an environmentally friendly Prisma Pak, similar to that used for fruit juices. The Prisma Pak was introduced into Canada in 2006 with the launch of French Rabbit in one litre containers. There are a number of new launches of wine products in Prisma Pak in Canada prior to end 2006. It has just been launched into Australia as B-Pak through the Cheviot Bridge wine company under the Long Flat brand. Cask Wine is also known as "goon".
[edit] Advantages
While cask wine is often of a cheaper variety, the packaging method itself is arguably superior to other methods. The chief advantage to bag-in-a-box packaging for wine is that it prevents oxidation of the wine as it is dispensed. Whereas wine in a bottle is oxidized by the volume of air in the bottle which has displaced the wine already poured, wine in a bag is never touched by air and thus never subject to oxidation until it is put in a glass. Thus, bag in a box packaging is not inferior per se, but is simply preferred by producers of more economical wines such as Franzia because it is inexpensive.
Box wine is not subject to cork taint or spoilage due to not drinking the wine quickly enough after opening. A bag of wine, once removed from the box, will float on water. This property allows quick cooling of a white wine by immersing it in an ice bath.
Other advantages of boxing wine include greater efficiency of storage and transport of rectangular boxes, and elimination of the risk of breakage incurred by transporting wine in bottles.
Cask wine is very cheap, normally around AU$10 (US$8) for 4L in Australia, cheaper still in the US.[citation needed]
[edit] Disadvantages
The bag is gas-porous and as a result cask wine has a definite shelf life even when unopened. Most casks will have a best-before date stamped.
As a result, while now often of quite reasonable quality, like Beaujolais nouveau it is not intended for cellaring and should be drunk within the prescribed period.
Many people consider a glass bottle and the uncorking to be part of the ritual of wine drinking.
Manufacturers of 'higher class' bottle wines often complain about the cheapness of 'cask' wines, arguing that they provide a cheap means for alcoholics to become inebriated.[citation needed]
[edit] References
- ^ Wine cask. Powerhouse Museum. Retrieved on March 5, 2007.
