In the last few years, I have fallen behind on my wine-drinking. On most nights, I don't want to have to think about whether there are enough people to finish a bottle of wine or how much I will have to pour out in a few days once I've forgotten about it. When I am at a restaurant, I hesitate to order wine because I definitely don't want a whole bottle myself and usually won't finish a bottle with one other person. The options by the glass tend to be less good, or less well-priced. And who knows when the restaurant opened that bottle?
I think more producers and restaurants should consider taking a tip from beer and offering wine on tap. It solves many of the problems I mentioned above for the consumer and has some promising features for profitability on the sellers' side:
1. Wine that is kegged properly is corked less often (less spoilage) because less wine is exposed to oxygen.
2. Kegging means no more broken bottles during shipping.
3. It means less shipping cost -- more wine, less sensitive packaging, and packaging period.
4. Kegging is more environmentally friendly and avoids wasting bottles, corks, foil, etc.
5. Wine can be poured in small amount without wasting bottles of undrunk wine for the restaurant.
6. It can help smaller producers get their wine on the table at local restaurants without the barriers that go into packaging and shipping.
Sometimes, you need a rare bottle or the ceremony of popping a cork. But this would be a great way for every-day wines to get into glasses of consumers. Cheers!
This can be found throughout Italy, though typically with lower quality wine. There are a number of restaurants I went to in Rome that have 2-5 wines on tap, typically of the trattoria or osteria level. These are the sort of mid- to low-quality eating establishment in Italian culture, below the more formal ristorante. Thus, it seems likely that restaurants outside of Italy should be able to mimic this style of wine service.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, the bottiglierie is another Italian drinking establishment you should look into. The bottiglierie is an interesting twist on the liquor store, where instead of buying a bottle of wine, you bring whatever container you prefer to fill with wine and pay by volume. The offerings were again not your high-end wines, but generally covered the low and mid-level priced wines. Combined with a vacuum corkage device, you could very easily have a number of wines on hand of whatever volume you desired. The issue here may be getting large wine companies to change their production line for a niche market while smaller wineries shy away from being seen as doing anything that will push their brand down-market. In any case, there is precedent in Italy for your idea, which indicates that it is something restaurants and retailers should explore.
I have been surprised that the wine-on-tap concept has not yet gained wider-spread adoption. And, it strikes me that there is likely something on the supplier side economics that makes it too expensive to set up (just pure fixed cost to build out), or too expensive to operate (for reasons that are currently beyond me) – and I would be curious to hear from an owner-operator about how they make it work.
ReplyDeleteGiven I wrote my post this week on the Las Vegas wine scene (and how many Master Somms work there), I also came across a link to a Wine Bar called “The Hostile Grape” [1] in Las Vegas (given many of us were there this week, I felt it was topical). The Hostile Grape has more than 160 different wines on tap (and self service via a ATM-like swipe card). While this may be more of a novelty experience in a place like Las Vegas, it strikes me that this could be a very popular restaurant/bar concept (and business idea) in other cities (that I know has been replicated to a much lesser extent), but in my experience, not with the sheer diversity of >160 different wines. Maybe we should make a class trip back!
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[1] https://www.simplemost.com/hostile-grape-wine-atm-las-vegas/
This is really interesting - thanks for sharing! There's a new wine bar in my hometown whose business model is centered around the wine on tap concept, with a twist. It's called SixtyFour (https://sixtyfourwinebar.com/), and the idea is that they have 64 different wines by the glass every day. I think they way they manage this is instead of having a huge keg of wine, there's a pressurized technology that allows them to put one bottle at a time into the dispenser system and releases a little each time someone pours a glass. This allows for a more quickly rotated selection (e.g, can serve different wines two days in a row).
ReplyDeleteI visited for the first time one of the last times I was home, and was pretty impressed. Being in the suburbs, my mom drove and was hoping to keep her drinking to a minimum so she could drive home, so I did a full tasting flight and she did one or two tastes. The ability to select how much you want (2 oz vs. full glass) of 64 types of wine was perfect for our situation because you can try something new without going overboard, per the rationale of your original post.
I think a wine bar like SixtyFour requires a decent amount of capital to get going because the technology is more expensive than a corkscrew opener, but they've earned attention from their more novel concept. In addition, they've marketed themselves as an event space for companies and social gatherings, which are both circumstances in which having a wider variety of wine than the standard "one red, one white" option is valuable. I'll be interested to see if more wine bars start to adopt this concept for all of the reasons you mentioned!
I lived in London before school, and this was definitely a thing! Here is one of the more famous retailers, which is based in Borough Market (big food market, also a major tourist attraction): https://boroughwines.co.uk/. They call themselves "wine on tap specialists," and it seems like they even have a side business consulting for other restaurants and retailers that want to set up wine on tap. There isn't a huge drinking area on site, so I knew it more for being a place where you could bring a glass bottle with one of those swing tops and pay to fill it up to take home. Then you're not paying for the packaging! And just to put some numbers to what Aurora mentioned above: "Each 24l keg = 32 bottles (75cl), saving 16kg of glass from being produced and disposed of."
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