The Cubist Movement

It wasn’t the thought of the charity I was helping, or the fact that friends would be impressed, that made me pump my pedals into the cardiac red zone as we neared the top of the 2,000-metre Sunwapta Pass.

No, it was because I was just minutes away from enjoying a glass of chilled chardonnay on a summit that offers one of the best views in the world.

The top of the pass marks the division between Banff National Park and Jasper National Park and looks across the Columbia Icefields to Mt. Athabasca — at 11,452 feet (3,491 metres), a Canadian Rockies’ icon.

“Aren’t you going to put a couple of ice cubes in your wine?” asked my companion Stephen Douglas, when we stopped to take in the majestic glaciers. “I’m hotter than a seal in the Sahara.”

“No,” I told him. “I don’t want to dilute the nose of spicy cinnamon toast, apple pie crust and ripe honeydew melon.”

It was a glib, tongue-in-cheek remark because I didn’t know how the wine had fared. It had been opened a couple of nights earlier and bounced up and down in our support RV as we made our way over rolling, gravel roads to our overnight stops.

But there was no mistaking the flavours of apple surrounded by toffee, yeast and the crisp, lively finish. A glass or two of wine each night on our 920-kilometre ride through the Rockies to support Kids with Cancer last summer was made more enjoyable because we didn’t have to worry about breaking a wine bottle, cork taint or oxidization spoiling leftover wine.

My Banrock Station Chardonnay and Black Box Paso Robles Californian are known as Bag-In-Box, or BIBs (or “cask wine”). The Vendage California Shiraz was in 500-ml servings, akin to the juice boxes kids take for school with their lunches.

The idea of taking some easy-to-carry cartons on the trip came from Stacey-Jo Strombecky, a card-carrying sommelier and fine wine portfolio manager for Liquor Select, a boutique Edmonton store.

“The Aussies call boxed wine Chateau Cardboard,” she said, when I’d discussed our need to rebalance electrolytes with the goodness found in wine.

“After pedaling about 150 kilometres every day, you’ll be shaky. But if you drop a BIB, or a Tetra Pak, it won’t shatter.” BIBs come in strong plastic bags — sometimes made of Mylar — which sit inside a cardboard box. Wine producers fill and seal the bags. Customers tear open a pre-cut window and connect a nozzle to a built-in port, sealing the bag once more.

Tetra Pak companies use low-density polyethylene, a government-approved food-contact material, to seal wine. The silver material encasing the polyethylene is an ultra-thin layer of aluminum. It forms a barrier against light and oxygen preventing spoilage without using preservatives. Covering the aluminum are two layers of clear, food-grade polyethylene (plastic), preventing the aluminum from coming into contact with the wine. The box steadies the bag and helps aesthetically.

Drinking wine from such containers, I thought, was as bad as drinking rye under fluorescent lights in a trailer park. Would friends talk behind my back if they spotted me by a swift-moving, glaciated river, turning the plastic spigot on a container not unlike a milk carton? I was a pinot noir guy long before Miles introduced it to the masses through Sideways.

“You’re out of touch,” Strombecky told me. “The cubist movement [as she termed the carton phenomena] found almost immediate acceptance with many after the Stelvin or screwcap closures tossed a curved ball to traditionalists.

There’s ripe, yummy, premium wine going into Tetra Paks and they’re finding a place on shelves alongside some very respectable wines.”

It was time to ask friends if cartons would destroy my carefully nurtured image of the suave mountain man.

Dwayne Bada, an Edmonton-based Medallion Wine Marketing executive whose company sells a range of cask wine and Tetra Paks, told me that sales of both are exploding as wine becomes part of daily Canadian living and not just a special-occasion treat.

“These wines are particularly popular around the patio and pool, in boats, with RV users and campers,” he said. “We know lots of cross-country skiers and snowmobile enthusiasts who have taken them into cabins. Most people are quite willing to give the wine a taste.”

It was more than 40 years ago, he told me, that the Scholle Corp., of Northlake, Illinois, designed the box system for sulphuric acid battery electrolyte disposal. “The Aussies needed something safe to hold wine they were taking to the beach about 25 years ago, and used the system to package it,” he said. “They were so successful that many have erroneously credited them with its invention.”

The notion that carton wine must be cheap has been overcome globally. Cask and Tetra Pak wines have been so well received that more than half the wine sold in Australia in 2006 is boxed. In Sweden, it’s 60 per cent. The wine-snooty British are fast approaching those numbers, while countries as diverse as Italy and Chile are catching on quickly. In the United States, category sales rose about 30 per cent in 2005. And even the indifferent-to-trends French are embracing the idea.

The Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) has become a champion of Tetra Paks after being told to reduce the number of bottles being sent to Michigan landfills. The LCBO invited vintners from around the world to offer wines in innovative, environmentally friendly packaging. In August of 2005, French winemaker Boisset became the first to respond and launched a line of French Rabbit wines in Tetra Pak.

“Sales reached $2 million in the first three months of sales,” said Daniele Gauvin, a spokesperson for the LCBO. “It was the most successful launch of new wine in LCBO history. Boisset is taking the concept internationally and we expect to have dozens more products in alternative packing by this time [in 2007].”

Tetra Paks have many advantages, says Lyle Clarke, a senior LCBO policy adviser. “It takes 26 trucks to deliver the same number of empty glass bottles to a bottling plant as one truck containing Tetra Pak cartons. Filled containers take up one-third less cargo space.” Other advantages of a carton container include their being impervious to potentially wine-damaging light, and that they are lightweight and compact, saving storage space and energy costs in shipping.

The world-renowned Chicago-based Institute of Food Technologists declared in 1989 that Tetra Pak’s aseptic processing and packaging is the most significant food science innovation in the last 50 years and cited “unsurpassed protection of nutrition and flavour.”

Sampling at home one evening, I found it very easy to enjoy the health benefits of a glass of wine while checking the late night news. A chilled white was “on tap” simply by opening the fridge door. I still have a red that’s as fresh as the day I opened it three months ago.

But reaction to cask wine and Tetra Paks has been mixed. At Edmonton’s The Wine Cellar — which became the first privately owned wine store in Canada in November 1985 — the global wine lake may freeze over before cask wines appear on its shelves.

“As soon as Chateau Latour starts putting its wine in BIBs, I’ll get my order in,” said store owner Wade Brintnell when asked in 2006. “I’m happy to let the 20 wine stores in the 20-block radius around us have the business. We sell the most high-end Burgundy and Bordeaux in the city and I don’t feel the need to compete. Given how long it has taken Stelvin to gain some acceptance, it could be years before BIBs become mainstream.”

Marketers at prominent Bordeaux wine producer Andre Lurton are taking a close look at the potential in Ontario after significant success in Norway with BIB wines. “We were concerned last year that our reputation in Norway might be damaged by boxing our wine,” says James Ryland, Lurton sales and marketing director. “But in our first four months, we sold 25,000 bottles of Chateau Bonnet Blanc. The wine also helped our profile, and bottle sales in 2005 rose to 130,000 from 80,000.”

But the LCBO’s Clarke says Ontario has given provincial producers the right to sell cask wine for years, and the market would be opened to others only after consultation with them and the provincial government.

Rens Breur, the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge food and beverage director, says BIB wine is still closely associated with cheap wine. But he’s keeping his options open. “At some point, we might bring in better cask wine for use in the back areas of our hotel,” he says. “We will be guided by the perception of our guests on more premium wine.”

This summer, I plan to cycle from Vancouver to Edmonton. The friends I travelled with last year already have asked that I send them a list of available cask Tetra Pak wine. And they’re beer guys.

Nick Lees has written The Edmonton Journal's wine column for many years and is a regular guest on radio and television wine programs. He regularly organizes wine-based charity fundraisers and received the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal and the City of Edmonton's Award of Excellence for his efforts.
This article originally appeared in the June 2006 issue of Wine Access magazine.