While memories of it may not be particularly fond ones, goon has a place in the heart of many Australians. Cheap and cheerful cask wine is almost a rite of passage for many around the country, but not for much longer if experts’ predictions prove right.

Drinking trends are changing and Australians now have a focus on quality over quantity, BWS chief executive Guy Brent told news.com. It’s first fatality is cask wine, which as a category is declining by 5 percent annually. “Cask wine as a category is declining,” says Guy.“It’s holding up reasonably well, but it has been declining for the last couple of years. But again even in cask wine, we’re seeing there is more demand for the two- and three-litre casks than there is for the five-litre.”

It’s not just basic wine that has been overlooked by Australians, but beer with mainstream options suffering. “People are being more adventurous, drinking international or craft beer,” Guy continues. “Also from a spirits point of view, people are trading up.”

As a result, liquor stores like BWS now have to approach their ordering differently. Personalisation has become key to customer happiness. “We have moved away from having a one-size-fits-all approach to really tailoring our ranges to the local demographics,” says Guy. “We use pretty extensive data sets — demographics, supermarket data and product trend data — to figure out what the right range is for each of those stores, but then we’ve overlaid the big data feeds with feedback from our store managers.

“For instance, our Mosman store needs to have all the major beer lines for the tradies who finish work on multimillion-dollar houses, and also needs a super-premium spirit and wine range.”