Josh Brooks: When bag-in-box aims for the stars

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It’s always a pleasure to receive samples of packs and, here at PN Towers, we were especially happy a couple of weeks ago when the publicity people for Constellation, the world’s biggest wine company, very kindly sent a sample of the company’s new FreshPack bag-in-box wine pack.

Now, I’m a staunch supporter of glass bottles for wine – they look lovely on the dinner table and are part of the whole experience of collecting and keeping wines. I can’t imagine a wine cellar (or, in my case, corner of the living-room) without the weighty glass bottles that are so associated with the grape.

So I was a somewhat sceptical about this new pack. The box contains 2.25l of wine – or three standard bottles’ worth – and, Constellation claims, keeps wine fresh for up to six weeks after opening.

Of course, I took it home to test and am happy to report that I was unable to test the six-week claim – three bottles of wine do not last that long in my household.

But I have to say I was impressed. Even though fridge is small, the pack was a perfect fit on the top shelf and kept the wine – a Hardy’s Nottage Hill white – cold right up until the moment of drinking. Serving it was fun, too, with the tap turning the fridge into an instant wine dispenser – even though the pack needed to be removed and tipped at an angle once the pack was about two-thirds empty.

What’s more, the wine was not bad. Not amazing, true, but then you’re unlikely to get anything very fine in a bag-in-box pack. Nevertheless, this was a much classier design than most of the bag-in-box wines on offer in my local supermarket.

But I’m not convinced it’s going to become a regular feature of either my fridge or my wine cellar. You wouldn’t keep a bag-in-box wine for any length of time. It’s no doubt good for parties and, from a weight point of view, there’s a clear argument for the pack’s environmental credentials (even though my borough wouldn’t recycle it). It’s fine in the fridge but you wouldn’t have it on a dinner table. Conclusions? Call me conservative, but I’m sticking with glass.

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