Thinking outside the bottle!
As the wine world prepares once more for the hurly-burly of Bordeaux’s En Primeur (wine futures) season, one brave merchant is to take a giant leap into the unknown. Jascots Wine Merchants launched last night, to great fanfare, the Magna-Carton™ – the world’s first ever all paper wine container – with the intention of filling them with Bordeaux’s finest wines from the much heralded 2010 vintage.
Jascots Wine Merchants’ Director of Purchasing and celebrated ‘free-thinker’, David Round MW admits the idea won’t be to everybody’s taste, ‘For many this will seem a little “off-the-wall” but in fact the paper carton is the perfect container for fine Bordeaux. My milk tastes lovely and fresh every time I pour it from a carton and I’ve never had a bad experience even with fruit based dri
nks like orange juice. Well I naturally thought ‘why not wine?’’
The light-weight cartons were designed by Swedish based company Havn-Ulaf and are 100% recyclable. Head designer Agata Lütterbotul confirmed that production was not an easy process ‘the fine wine carton is one of the most innovative projects we have ever worked on, there are many challenges to creating an inert, breathable vessel for fine wine using only recycled paper. It has been a labour of love but the results are perfect.’
The cartons are exclusively magnum size (150cl), made entirely from recycled paper and may save considerably on Carbon Emissions generated from their transport. The cartons will be available to Jascots customers for En Primeur allocations from participating Châteaux.
Some high profile players in the investment wine world are sceptical as to wine’s ageability in the cartons. Rupert Sipitnot-Swigett managing Director of G.O.U.T. Fine Wine Investments commented ‘The idea is tremendous in principal but the ageability of wines in these cartons is totally unproven, I should think carefully before ordering my wines in paper containers even in the specially designed Magna-Carton™.’
Only time will tell how wines evolve in the groundbreaking new container but the concept is sure to ruffle a few feathers in Bordeaux next week.
Great idea! I’ll have a case (or is it now a box)of Petrus in cartons please…..
Brilliant idea, but milk floats will have to have a permanent security cordon!!
A pinch and a punch for the first of the month…….a fool and his carton are often more foxed than boxed!
Well done Jacko.
Now what is the date today…?!?
Best one I have seen in years. Top marks!
Ha , ha, ha – you nearly had me fooled again! Maybe you’ll be boxing the grapes from the harvest off the vines at The Observatory!
Excellent! We never have enough storage space in the restaurants, and the magna-carton will stack perfectly. Just what the fine-dining sector needs!
Very good Jacko… I was starting to have one of my vapours and getting angry!! Took me a while…… xxx
I totally fell for it.
Thanks Nick Oakley!!!
Absolutely genius. Does it work for fizz as well? What about fizz left in a hot place where the pressure multiplies? I think there was some research about this by Richard Head sometime back… A