Box of delights: time to rethink bag-in-box wines | Wine

Adnams Tempranillo Shiraz Bag in Box, Castilla-La Mancha, Spain (£ 19.99, 2.25 l, adnams.fr) It has now been six decades since Australian winemaker Thomas Angove had the idea of ​​selling wine in a plastic bag within a cardboard box – a type of packaging that was soon to receive the frankly unimaginative, but robotically paced, character. downright descriptive. name, bag-in-box. And yet, even now, whenever you gift a drink filled with that squidgy little plastic faucet, the medium is still the message. Most of us, it seems, instinctively believe that a wine will always be better if it comes from a bottle rather than a box, and any praise is always strongly cautioned by “… for a bag-in-box ”. Well that’s just the kind of feedback I got when I took this Spanish red to a family reunion recently, although as far as I’m concerned it’s a delicious bursting with succulent bramble fruit, regardless of the container from which it is served.

Terre di Faiano Organic Rosso, Apulia, Italy (£ 25.99, 2.25 l, Waitrose) Tempranillo-Shiraz is one of two very good Spanish box wines currently on the books of Adnams, the other being a Verdejo-Sauvingon Blanc blend with spicy exotic fruits (also from Castilla-La Mancha, also 2.25 liters, and also £ 19.99). It’s not a game for the cheaper segment of the market by the relatively high-end dealer, although at the equivalent of around £ 6.66 a bottle they offer pretty good value for the money. It is not above all about practicality either, although this is undoubtedly one of the advantages of this format (an opened bag-in-box wine will last several weeks longer than an opened bottle). According to Adnams, the main attraction for entering boxes is their durability. The company calculates that a bag-in-box made, like the one in Adnams from fully recyclable materials, has a carbon footprint roughly one-tenth the size of a single-use glass bottle. That’s also part of the pull for one of the nicest boxes on the market, a party hit that features Waitrose’s pleasantly plum southern Italian red.

Rouge du Grappin Beaujolais-Villages Bagnum (£ 30, 1.5 l, store.legrappin.com) For all that I am very happy to drink the boxed wines of Adnams and Waitrose, I don’t think even their makers would claim that they are the best wines known to mankind. There is a reason for this. Even though most types of wine described as “good” are consumed within a year or two of purchase, the ability to age for years, if not decades, is still considered an essential prerequisite for any claim. a wine could have greatness. The boxes, which have an expiration date of around one year, do not lend themselves to the same type of graceful aging as that of a bottle. Yet the quality available in bag-in-boxes and pouches is significantly better than it was five years ago. London-based catering institution St-John sells its trio (red, white and rosé) of highly drinkable French house wines in a typically aesthetically ascetic box. And the bagnums of the excellent name of Gappin contain bistro-quality wines like this fresh and sappy Beaujolais.

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