Bars & Nightclubs Reduce Costs with Qualaity Keg Wine

Bars & Nightclubs Reduce Costs with Keg Wine

 

Restaurants and bars reduce costs with wine on tap

 

More and more bars and nightclubs are serving wine from kegs instead of uncorking traditional glass bottles. Keg wine reduces time, waste, and costs associated with bottling, packaging, delivering, and storing wine. Keg packaging eliminates bottle shock and glass recycling, reduces labor costs, and minimizes the wine wastage involved with corked bottles and stale wine. Kegs preserve freshness and speed up serving time. Kegs can also be attractive and unique. Even better, the cost savings is not at the expense of quality; many of these keg wines are surprisingly good. Often a keg wine may even taste better than the same wine in a bottle that has been opened and stored.

 

More and more restaurants and bars, especially in California and New York, are putting kegs of wine behind their bars, pouring wines by the glass from a tap. Wineries, restaurants, bars and consumers alike discover that the wines are good and well preserved.  There are economic and environmental benefits to kegs. Even some Whole Foods now sell wine in mini-kegs.

 

Attractive wooden kegs can be seen more and more often on display on the bar. They are not only economical but also can be attractive attention getters and conversation pieces. But what is the quality?

 

What you can get on tap varies widely, as do bottles, but there are some very good wines being poured from kegs, including Saintsbury Chardonnay Carneros 2009 (86 Wine Spectator points), Miner Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 2008 (85 points) and Clif Family Sauvignon Blanc Napa Valley 2009 (86 points). It’s also popular for restaurants and bars to contract for house blends—separate keg brands avoid potential conflicts with a winery's distributor who can more easily wholesale excess inventories in private label kegs without conflicting with its retail brands.

 

Why would anyone want wine on draft? The main benefits for consumers is freshness and cost savings. In a standard wine-by-the glass program, restaurants often keep an opened bottle around for hours or days, increasing oxidation. Better venues discard bottles after a day, or use storage systems to keep the wine fresh. But that's not a concern with kegs, thus allowing the bar owner to pass savings on to the customer. Draft wine comes in stainless steel kegs, connected to the taps by plastic tubing containing inert gas that pushes wine through the lines. This inert gas also protects the wines from oxidation by keeping the air out. Bypassing the bottle altogether not only eliminates bottleing costs but also eliminate concerns about bottle variation, bottle shock and faulty corks.

 

Kegs cut down on waste and costs. Bottles, corks, cartons, labels and capsules can add up to $2 to $3 per bottle. Kegs are reusable, which is more environmentally friendly than glass recycling. Wine in kegs weigh less than an equivalent amount of wine in bottles, which reduces transportation costs. Because of that, many keg wines are sold at a discount by as much as 25 percent off of the wholesale bottle price, discounts which are passed on to the consumer.

 

With kegs, restaurants can more easily sell wine in different sizes, giving consumers more options, from small, taste-size pours to liter-sized carafe servings. Breakage is not a concern, and kegs take up less space than cases of wine—a typical keg holds the equivalent of 26 bottles.

 

Keg wine is not a new idea. The containers are often used to store wines in wineries before bottling, and in Europe it's not uncommon to serve wine directly from kegs or casks.

 

Keg wine is starting to appeal to a younger demographic who are open to trying new tastes and presentations.  Another reason wine on tap is growing is because people are figuring out how to do it right so that the wine you order on tap is going to taste fresh, whether it's the first glass or the last out of the barrel.

 

The Kegs, Installation and Maintenance.

 

The most commonly used kegs are stainless steel. They are usually filled directly from the blending tank at the winery and immediately sealed under pressure using inert gas to prevents oxidation and spoilage. The wine will remain fresh for six months or longer as long as it remains under pressure.

 

Proper washing, filling and sanitizing technology is now widely available. Inert gas to can clean and sanitize kegs as well as the dispensing tube inside the keg.. Inert gases like nitrogen and argon protect the wine from oxidizing. But wine on tap also needs small amounts of carbon dioxide, like that produced in a bottle, to help a wine's aromatic and fresh qualities. This is similar to what is used when Guinness is poured on tap. Once the proper equipment is installed and staff is trained, the system can be relatively maintenance free.

 

Cost Savings

Kegging mean less packaging and production costs (labels, corks, bottles, bottling, boxes, storage) and easy low-cost recycling. Those savings can be shared between the owner and the customer. The keg system preserves freshness, reduces variability and helps guarantee. The overall savings can result in more than 25% savings over bottled wine.

 

While keg wines offer quality, value and green values, they will not replace bottle wine for table service and high quality. But a wine-by-the-glass program can be simplified and improved by serving wines on tap, and wine lovers are embracing the idea.

 

by Robert Taylor