(NewsAu) - IT seemed like a good idea at the time.

Fifty years ago this month, late South Australian winemaker Tom Angove had a brainwave.

He had tonnes of grapes to work with, huge facilities at his Renmark vineyard to produce them into wine, but he wanted a smarter way to get a large volume to customers at the cheapest possible cost.

At that stage the largest package in use was a half-gallon glass flagon. He needed something bigger, and a way to keep wine fresh after opening.

He knew there was a product already out there that might just work — a flexible plastic bag in a box used to transport and dispense battery acid in garages and workshops.

His light-bulb moment was to put that bag to use in the family wine business.

Problem solved — almost. In 1965 Tom took out the patent for what we all now know and love as the wine cask and Tom’s son, John, the present patriarch of the Angove wine company, still recalls with a scratch of his head that moment when his dad brought home a lab-built prototype.

“I told him it was crazy. I said to him I didn’t think people would buy wine out of a plastic bag inside a cardboard box. His peers thought the idea also was a bit crazy,” John says.

Tom persisted. He was convinced about the convenience of the design in packaging 4.5 litres of wine.