New regulations ban floppy packaging

The cost of living for those who’ve been buying their tipple in the naked foil bags known as ‘papsakke’ [soft bags] is set to increase. The Minister of Agriculture has just published amendments to the regulations requiring that liquor can only be sold for off-consumption in a ‘self-supporting’ container.

The Wine and Spirit Board notice to this effect tells us that a ‘"self-supporting" container means a container which retains its original or assembled shape irrespective or whether it is filled or empty’.

Wine in this sort of container must now be enclosed in ‘self-supporting, not-returnable, tamper-proof outer packaging’, with a sealed tap. In effect – no papsaks allowed, only bag-in-a-box wine. And in no greater quantities than five litres. The same size limit now applies to wine sold in plastic containers.

The new regulations are clearly in response to the embarrassment felt by the industry powers-that-be at the image of cheap papsak wine in the context of rampant endemic alcoholism in, particularly, the Western Cape winelands. It is presumably the  reasoning of the authorities that it will help address an enormous social problem if suppliers to this lucrative market segment are obliged to package and sell their wine with a little more decorum – and preferably with a warning printed on the box (although this aspect of legislation seems to have run into some problems, as we reported recently).

It must be presumed that these new regulations will also have the effect of making illegal the chic new packaging apparently increasingly in demand by British supermarkets, and used locally by, for example, Versus (see our report and tasting note on the Versus white in its new pouch).

Later note: Hermann Böhmer of the Company of Wine People assures us that they had done very careful research, and that the 'Versus pouch and Arniston Bay pouch fully comply with the requirements of “self-supporting, not-returnable, tamper-proof outer packaging’, with a sealed tap as set out in the regulations'.