Angove winery's Tom Angove adapts the first cask bag-in-a-box wine from Renmark, South Australia, in 1965
The original one-gallon bag-in-a-box cask wine brought out by Angove's Wines at Renmark, South Australia.
Cask (bag in a box) wine was invented by Tom Angove of Angove's, a South Australian winemaker from Renmark, and patented by the company in 1965 – in another major boost to the everyday Australian wine market.
Angove's design was based on a product already on the market: a bag in a box that held battery acid. The Angove bag took two years to develop before polyethylene bladders of one gallon (4.5 litres) were placed in corrugated boxes for retail sale of table white, table red, port, sweet sherry and muscat.
Tom Angove’s original 1965 cask design 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. During the next few years others improved on the design. In 1967, 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, Sam Wynn of Wynnvale Wines reverted to the bag-in-box technology patented by American company Scholle in the 1950s for battery-acid containers. All modern wine casks now use a plastic tap, exposed by tearing away a perforated panel on the box.
Orlando added to casks’ appeal with its 1970s successful marketing campaign: “Where do you hide your Coolabah?”
The bag-in-box packaging concept expanded to other beverages including spring waters, orange juices and wine coolers but today wine and spring water are the main two beverages packed into these bags. Bag-in-a-box packaging was primarily preferred by producers of less expensive wines as it is cheaper to make and distribute than glass bottles.
But bag-in-a-box premium wine has been marketed in California and it has gained appeal with its environmental advantages over glass-bottled wine, besides being easier to transport and store.