Box wines, like the screw cap, have had significant hurdles to hop in terms of consumer perception and taste quality. Lingering memories of the 1980's box wine, Franzia, have probably done more than their fair share of wrecking consumer reception to box wines. However, innovative packaging, month-long storage options and upgrades in both quality and consumer value have all come together to make many wine lovers take a second look at the box wine phenomena. For an everyday wine option, the boxed versions have something to offer everyone:Australia has been working with boxed wines for years now, just like they were pioneers with the screwcap, they don't seem to shy away from non-traditional wine packaging or closures for that matter. So it's no surprise that two of the best box wine options come for down under. Hardy's and Banrock Station are both fine starting points in the box wine segment. Give Hardy's Shiraz or Cabernet Sauvignon a try if you are looking for fruit-forward everyday reds.

The Chardonnay and Cab are also worth trying from Banrock Station.The Octavin Home Wine Bar has recently come out with an international collection of box wines. With wines from Spain, New Zealand, Hungary and, of course , California they have a fairly comprehensive offering from various growing regions. I tried the Big House Red ($22 for 3L), a blend of 13 grapes ranging from Syrah and Grenache to Petit Verdot and Barbera. best red wine to eat with pastaThe overall impression was straightforward, ripe red fruit with a palate focus on raspberry and just a touch of vanilla. best april wine songs top 10Octavin also puts out a Monthaven Winery Central Coast Chardonnay ($24 for 3L) that exhibits a solid balance of fruit, acid and super subtle oak with a fruit focus equally distributed between green apple and D' Anjou pear on the palate.best dry non sweet white wine

Yellow + Blue Malbec ($12 for 1 L) from Argentina is another solid entry onto the stage of box wine. This one happens to be organic and typically brings upfront praise for its approachability and dark berry fruit palate profile. Killer Juice Cab ($22 for 3L) is another ultra ripe red wine option coming from the box wine segment. Though not a well-structured, complicated Cab by any stretch of the imagination, it serves its purpose as an everyday red wine entry and has plenty of fans to prove it.how much does a glass of wine cost at a restaurantBotabox Malbec is a delicious, medium-bodied, fruit-forward red wine with hallmark blackberry fruit, and a good bit of jammy plum flavor as well. what is the best red wine for diabeticsA nice addition to the boxed wine category.cheapest place to buy beer and wine

Two Old World box wine entries include: Folonari's Pinot Grigio ($20 for 3L) delivers a fairly standard dry white wine with a focus feature on apple aromas and palate presence from Italy's Veneto region. If you've tried this popular white wine in the bottle, you know what to expect from the box wine version.From The Tank ($35 for 3L) a fairly sophisticated, medium-bodied, red blend consisting of Grenache, Syrah, and Carignan from the Cotes du Rhone region. good cheap red italian wineThis red box wine will definitely stretch the box wine paradigm.best wine from spainIncreased storage capacities, cheaper packaging, and improved quality - all make box wines worth checking out for today's savvy wine consumer.best wine dcIs goon (box wine) made from fish eggs?

May 16, 2008   Subscribe Does goon (box wine) actually contain fish eggs?Brown Brothers’ moscato cask is dressed up as a designer handbag.Angove’s managing director John Angove, son of the inventor of the wine cask Tom Angove, with an orginal cask.12FIFTY years ago, South Australian winemaker Tom Angove filed a patent for a new kind of wine container: a plastic bag holding a gallon of liquid, packed inside a cardboard box. The wine cask was born, and Aust­ralia’s drinking culture changed forever. Here was a cheap way of enjoying wine that — thanks to the collapsible bag inside the box — stayed fresh for weeks after you opened it.The affordability and accessibility caught on: wine consumption soared during the 1970s and the “goon bag” became entrenched in our lives. During its heyday in the 80s and 90s, almost two out of every three glasses of wine consumed in Australia came out of a cask.In the past decade, cask wine sales have dropped by 6 per cent a year, and now only a third of wine consumed in Australia comes out of a silver bladder.

Some welcome this decline in cask wine consumption.Michael Thorn, chief executive of the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education, points out that thanks to Australia’s taxation system, cask wine can be bought here for as little as 25c a standard drink — compared with at least $1 a standard drink for even the cheapest spirits. And this isn’t healthy.“It’s just egregious,” says Thorn. “I can point to over 100 peer-reviewed reports demonstrating that the price of alcohol is ­inversely related to overall consumption of alcohol, ­including at harmful levels.” As a result, cask wine consumers drink more, and more often, than those who ­consume other types of drink.Meanwhile, some leading players in the wine industry are trying to reverse the decline in cask sales — or at least encourage people to view cask wine differently.This month, a group of large cask wine ­companies, supported by the Winemakers Federation of Australia, will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of Angove’s innovation at a glamorous function in Sydney.

The group will be launching a new promotional website, Ask For Cask, and the focus will be on the ­growing trend for up-market, smaller-volume, higher-value casks.“We cask producers have dropped the ball in the last decade or so,” says Scott Bell, manager of the cask ­business for Accolade Wines, best known for its Hardys brand.“At the same time, we know that more people are now choosing to enjoy better wine at home. So last November we launched our Magnum concept: 13 different products across some of our strongest brands, offering the same wine as we put into bottle but in 1.5-litre casks.”It’s too early to say, says Bell, how consumers will react to these higher-priced bags-in-boxes. But other prod­ucers such as Brown Brothers, which has recently dipped its toes into up-market casks, have been encouraged enough to cautiously expand production.It’s perhaps telling, though, that while Angove’s son John will be at the Ask For Cask event to recount his father’s story, the Angove wine company itself is no longer in the cask market.“

And we have no plans to get back into it,” says John ­Angove. “We decided years ago that we needed to climb up into the top branches of the wine tree — that we’d played in the lower branches for long enough. So that’s what we’re concentrating on now: premium wines in bottle.”GOON BAGS: THE EARLY YEARSTOM Angove’s original 1965 cask design, pictured above, didn’t last long: the consumer had to open the box, take the bag out, snip off a corner to pour the wine, and seal the bag with a paperclip — not very efficient and rather leaky.But during the next few years others improved on the design.Melbourne wine merchant Dan Murphy worked with Geelong inventor Charles Malpas to develop a tap that could be attached to the bag, letting wine out but stopping air getting in.Penfolds winemaker Ian Hickinbotham also worked to perfect the tap idea and it appeared on that company’s first version of the cask in 1968 — a bag inside what looked like a paint tin.In 1971 Wynns adopted reliable bag-in-box technology that had been patented by American company Scholle in the 1950s for battery acid containers.

And Orlando added the final piece of the jigsaw with the 1970s marketing campaign for its casks: “Where do you hide your Coolabah?”Orlando’s operations manager at the time, Perry Gunner, once explained to an interviewer why the campaign resonated so strongly with Australians.“It was often said that (with) a cask of wine in the fridge, no one actually quite knew how much you were drinking,” he said.“They even suggested that when Mum and Dad were away the children would go and help themselves to the cask of Coolabah in the fridge.”CHATEAU CARDBOARD: FOUR OF THE BESTYalumba first released its up-market, two-litre varietal wine casks all the way back in 1984. “We were advised not to,” says Yalumba chairman Robert Hill Smith. “But the market really took to them: they resonated in all the leafy suburbs.” Still a reliable choice for cask drinkers who want something a little fancy.Accolade Magnum 1.5-litre casks, $21-$30Accolade Wines already produces huge quantities of cheap four and five-litre casks under the Berri and Stanley labels.