Idea Development

Looking into the history of the Wine Bladder

mid 1960s a South Australian family winery, Angove's, was looking for a way to sell its cheaper red wines in bulk. The answer was a modern version of the traditional European wine 'bladder' (a leather pouch that collapses as the wine is poured, keeping air out). 

Polyethylene bags were filled with 4.4 litres (1 gallon) of wine and then put into boxes. You simply opened the box, snipped off a corner of the bag and poured the wine. 

To close it you squeezed the air out of the bag, sealed it with a special peg and popped it back into its box and into the fridge.

The bag-in-a-box concept took off. In 1967 Penfold Wines and C H Malpas patented a plastic, airless flow-tap welded into a metallised plastic bag. This innovation allowed the bag to stay in the box and be tapped like a traditional wine cask, and that's the version most 

It is a South Australian invention - hoorah! and this object is still being made in Australia.
I think that that's really special, just today I was chatting with nan about the Global trading market and jobs in Australia. South Australia's wine industry is such a positive aspect of our economy. 

These plastic bladder have reshaped logistics according to an article posted by Bloombergs titled Australian Bladders Become Normal For Wine Exports, In this writing David Fickling reports that "Australia’s A$5.5 billion ($5.8 billion) wine industry is now moving more than half its overseas shipments in bulk, making the 40-day journey to Europe in bladders big enough to fill 32,000 bottles. It’s reshaping logistics and the flow of wine between the country, the largest exporter outside of Europe, and the U.K., the biggest net importer."

So the wine is exported in ginormous plastic wine bladders as previously companies were paying to ship glass, the wine bladders are a much more cost effective way to export! I like this idea of the increased flow of wine from Australia to other countries and I think that this could be a point of departure for a sculpture work.


Another idea that I had is based on the celebration of Australian innovation and invention, I imagined making a sculpture for the Angroves winery that could pay homage to their invention of the wine bladder. I played with idea of creating an object that is quite noticeably related to the process of wine making or drinking wine that could be constructed out of goon bags. Here I sketched an image of a wine glass, made of inflated goon bags.. and then I thought that it looked like a trophy or goblet at this point I was struck with the thought that with this wine glass I could make a toast to the invention of the wine bladder!

I am still working on another idea but at this stage I need a hot glue gun! because string and blue tac just aren't cutting it.. or joining it so to speak.

Actually a more abstract idea that could be fun to play with is how wine refracts light in a wine glass, I could document these patterns and make a work out of this. I am always really intrigued with the interaction of light and glass so this could be a fun thang to do... and I could use goon!