Wine in a bag. Often assumed to contain wine of mediocre quality that your parents drank with prawn cocktail in the 70s. There is, however, no reason why wine in a bag has to be bland and unexciting. We have been left behind by many other countries when it comes to embracing alternatives to the wine bottle, with many excellent quality wines available in bags or cartons in Australia, and even France!
Here at the Good Wine Shop, we recently tasted a pair of wines in a bag that were too good to miss – ladies and gentlemen, meet the Bagnum!
The Bagnum is the brainchild of Australian born winemaker Andrew Nielsen, who now divides his time between his home in London and his ‘micro-negociant’ (a small scale winery that buys in grapes from other people) operation in Burgundy. Under the Le Grappin label, Andrew bottles extremely high quality wines from vineyards in Savigny and Macon. When it came to his more quaffable, ‘everyday’ wines, Andrew’s passion for environmental issues led him to consider alternative packaging formats.
Andrew and Emma Nielsen
Bagnums contain a magnum’s worth of beautifully made white wine from Macon or red wine from Beaujolais, with grapes being sourced with the same care as for the winery’s top bottlings. Helen McGinn of the Daily Mail called the white ‘one of the best white wines I’ve tasted from a wine bag… a real classic, with ripe melon flavours and a touch of honey’. Not only do Bagnums carry a carbon footprint up to 80% less than the equivalent volume of bottled wine, they are around 30% cheaper too! As a bonus, the wine in a Bagnum is protected from oxygen after opening and keeps fresh for over two weeks.
We are sold on the Bagnum concept. These classily packaged, easy to carry wines are perfect for picnics and parties, and some have suggested that they will hang easily on the bedpost for a decadent breakfast in bed!
Bagnums cost £27.50 (equivalent to £13.75 a bottle) from The Good Wine Shop, we recommend you give them a try this summer – you won’t be disappointed!
Join us in the Kew store from 7pm on Thursday the 7th of July to taste these delicious wines for free with Emma Nielsen from Le Grappin!
