Australians commonly call boxed wine "goon," "goon bag," or "goon sack," derived from "flagon," but also use terms like cask wine, Chateau Cardboard, or Cardbordeux, reflecting its iconic, budget-friendly, and portable nature for parties and gatherings.
In Australia, boxed wine is known colloquially as "goon". The cardboard box is referred to as a "goon box" and the bag within is referred to as a "goon bag".
A few key terms for cheap wine slang are space bag (the bag within boxed wine), cardboardeaux (another term for boxed wine), and plonk (a favorite for cheap wine, coming from Australian roots).
Less inventive were names such as “boxie” or “box monster”. And rather grimmer was the nickname “bag of death”. Then it became a “goon” or “goon bag” or “goon sack” or just a “goonie”.
Boxed wines are on the rise
Inside the box, the wine is housed in a sturdy plastic bag complete with a built-in spigot. As the wine is drawn from the spigot, the vacuum-sealed bag collapses, which keeps air out so the wine stays fresh up to four weeks after opening, whether at room temperature or in the fridge.
Best Boxed Red Wine
Many people don't give wine in a box any leeway at all. This probably stems from the belief that everything that is on the cheaper side is automatically taken into consideration as low quality. Especially in the world of wine. For some wines, the only difference is the packaging.
There are a handful of Australian slang terms for wine. The most common is “plonk”, meaning cheap wine—though this can also mean any cheap alcohol. Other than that, it's likely to be called “chardy” (chardonnay) or “champers” (sparkling wine), and wine in a bag is called “goon” (boxed wine).
tinnie (plural tinnies) (Australia, slang) A can of beer. (Australia, slang) A small open aluminium boat. (New Zealand, slang) Small package of drugs wrapped in foil.
Cask wine - also known as boxed wine or more commonly, goon - is one of Australia's biggest contributions to the wine industry.
Celebrating 50 years of the bag-in-box, cask wine, or goon sack. It is one of South Australia's little known inventions, yet most of us would have used it at one time or another. This year the bag-in-box, often known as the goon bag, goon sack or boxed wine, turns 50.
Plonk is a term used primarily in Commonwealth English for generally cheap, low-quality wine. Some believe it to come from Australian slang, in reference to blanc (the French word for "white"), before it became naturalised in Britain.
According to Calver, the packaging's innovative design is the reason for the wine's extended freshness. The wine is "sealed inside a collapsible vacuum bag within the box," which dramatically reduces its exposure to oxygen — the main culprit behind spoilage and flat-tasting wine.
Boxed wine, or bag-in-box wine, was invented in 1965 by Australian winemaker Thomas Angove. The invention was intended to be a modern-day half-gallon wine jug. Shortly after, this product became popular in Australian markets. Come the 1990s, two-thirds of wine consumed in the country came out of a box.
Exy – a shorter version of “expensive” Footy – Australian football.
If you're hungry, these might come in handy: snag means sausage, barbie means barbeque, and sanga means sandwich. Used in a sentence: Throw a snag on the barbie, I want a sausage sanga!
Sexual intercourse. Root. Sexual intercourse, similar to the British word 'Shag'. Can also be used as a verb.
Woop Woop is used to refer to a place in the middle of nowhere. People use it to signify that a location is far away, unfamiliar to them, and difficult to get to.
Common Australian slang for a girl includes "Sheila" (older, sometimes dated or slightly derogatory), "chick," or just using general terms like "mate," "gal," or "lass," with context and tone being important, but "girl" is still widely used; some slang, like "moll," can refer to a girlfriend or a promiscuous woman, while "bogan" describes an unsophisticated person.
Goon is the Australian word for boxed wine - other names include cask wine, goon bag or goon sack.
The 7 main types of wine, based on style and production, are Red, White, Rosé, Sparkling, Fortified, Dessert, and Orange wines, each offering distinct flavors from different grapes and methods like fermentation, aging, and adding spirits. While there are many grape varieties (like Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay), these categories cover the core styles you'll encounter.
Syrah is called Shiraz in Australia due to a historical misinterpretation of the grape's name when James Busby brought it to Australia in the 1830s; early handwritten labels like "Scyras" or "Ciras" were misread or anglicized into "Shiraz," and the name stuck, linked to the ancient Persian city of Shiraz, despite the grape's actual French Rhône Valley origin. The name also became associated with Australia's distinct, often bolder, fruit-forward style, differentiating it from the French Syrah, although today some cooler-climate Australian producers use "Syrah" to reflect a more elegant style.
The 20-minute wine rule is a simple guideline to bring wines to their optimal serving temperature: put red wines in the fridge for about 20 minutes to cool slightly (as room temp is too warm), and take white wines out of the fridge for about 20 minutes to let them warm up a bit (as too cold masks flavors). This helps unlock the full aromas and flavors, as serving wines too hot or too cold mutes their complexity.
10 Recommended Boxed Red, White and Rosé Wines
Science does show that the type of polyethylene used for things like wine box bladders poses a low risk to human health. So, many would argue that it is safe.