The world should award a posthumous knighthood to winemaker Thomas Angove. He’s the guy who, on April 20, 1965, patented the world’s first goon bag: a polyethylene bladder placed in a corrugated cardboard box.

Cask wine is a seriously amazing thing, responsible for more people getting into wine, making merry, and experimenting with wine-clothesline-related ‘sports’ than any other alcohol vessel on earth. While the humble cask has been tarred with the ‘poor-quality wine’ brush, it has been given an incorrect rap.

Wine in a box is as good as anything in a bottle. There, I’ve said it. Every other year, I‘m invited to a blind tasting of just about every cask wine available in Australia – about 90-odd – and the takeaway message has always been, ”that was nowhere near as bad as I thought”.

Alongside the traditional image of cask wine, there’s been a quiet revolution of hipper producers dabbling with the packaging and a gradual increase in its presence in high-quality venues. James Hird, the wine guru behind the drinks programs at Icebergs Dining Room and Bar and the Dolphin Hotel in Sydney, is a convert. “I love the convenience,” he says. “And the increasingly interesting wines available in cask is compelling.”

Hird pours biodynamic red wine from Italy from cask and has collaborated with an Italian natural wine producer on the Dolphin’s house cask wine. “Biodynamic farming ticked a box for me, so did the bright, fresh wine that we were able to package up. The environmentally friendly packaging seals the deal.”

Hird suggests cask wine, once the domain of mass production, will become more prevalent as better producers bag up smaller-batch wines. “Advances in boxed wine mean smaller volumes can be bagged up, and we’re going to see more progressive wine producers heading down the cask path.” Exciting times indeed.

See here for Mike Bennie’s top 6 cask wine picks.