They say wine improves with age, and I improve with wine. For me, a meal without wine is called breakfast and I drink it by the box (known locally as a 'Mogo suitcase' - see note below).
Boxed wine comes out of a polyethylene bag that's packaged inside a cardboard box. This allows the wine to be poured off the top while the plastic then collapses onto the wine, so producing the airless flow system so vital to stopping the wine from oxidizing because wine exposed to air makes it taste as sharp as a porcupine's penis.
Would you be surprised if I told you that it was an Australian who started us off on decades of really bad hangovers? Yep, it was a South Australian by the name of Thomas Angove who in 1965 conceived and developed the first "bag in a box" after which Australians no longer had to keep things bottled up.
So next time you tap a cask of Chateau Neuf du Crap - or whatever your favourite poison may be - raise a glass to good ol' Angove. In fact, it's wine o'clock at "Riverbend, so I shall do so right now. Cheers!
Note: Mogo, just south of Batemans Bay, has a vibrant art community and is also the centre for the Aboriginal population of the area.
