How to Setup Wine on Tap for Your Bar or Restaurant

Looking to take your wine offering to the next level? Wine on tap systems are becoming more and more popular amongst restaurants, bars, catering companies, and any event venues that serve wine regularly.

Beer on tap has been a staple in every bar for decades, but less bars or restaurants may be aware of wine on tap. Wine tap systems can be a simplified way of serving wine to your patrons, so we’re going to answer some of the most common questions about offering wine on tap; what is wine on tap, how to install a wine tap, and why you should!

What is wine on tap?

A tap system uses a keg, just like a typical beer tap; but instead of dispensing beer, it’s wine. Using kegs, wineries can deliver wines to venues in much larger quantities, which is often a lot cheaper and easier to handle than multiple cases of bottled wines.

Due to pressurisation and the use of gases like nitrogen and argon, wine kept in a keg can be kept just as fresh as bottled wine.

What are the benefits of using wine on tap?

Less wastage

A typical keg can hold roughly 26 bottles of wine (or 120 glasses), a much more efficient and sustainable method of packaging, transporting and serving wine. Waste is reduced massively when using a wine on tap system due to no oxidation (we’ll delve deeper into this later on!), no corkage, and no spoilage. Get ready to say goodbye to throwing away half-full wine bottles that you opened a week ago!

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Better for the environment

Let’s say that a restaurant with one wine tap goes through 100 wine kegs in a year. Knowing that each keg holds about 26 bottles, It’s estimated that those bottles you would have used would have produced a whopping 39 pounds of packaging waste from boxes, bottles, foil wraps, corks, and labels.

It’s evident that even one wine tap can conserve resources and have a significant impact on your environmental output. In fact, there is a 96% reduction in carbon footprint compared to wine from bottles over 20 years. Even more impressive, one steel keg saves the C02 emission equivalent to 28 trees.

No oxidation

Anywhere serving wine will want to deliver a consistently fresh taste, but that can be difficult when serving only bottled wines. Once a bottle of wine is opened, it begins to oxidise, which degrades both the flavour and aroma, potentially losing its quality before there are enough orders to finish it.

Kegged wine, however, is pressurised, which stops passive oxidation occurring in the keg. Because they are so well-insulated, kegged wines provide a full six weeks of freshness, meaning the final glass will taste as fresh as the first.

Efficient storage

Instead of having hundreds of bottles in your storage room to keep track of, you just need to keep track of a few kegs. Also, it’s much easier to keep your wines at the right temperature using kegs. You can store more too, as the amount of storage space you’ll use for one keg is much less than what you would use for the same amount of bottles.

How to install a wine tap?

A traditional dispenser is set up, similar to that in many fixed establishments.

The font would sit on the bar or a craft tap on the wall. The fixed tap will be connected to a separate cooler, valves, gauges, pressure and the wine keg of wine using a professional engineer. These taps can be connected to existing dispense infrastructure.

As the wine is dispensed, argon and nitrogen push the wine from the keg into the glass, blanketing and cooling it and preventing oxidation from occurring each time the tap opens.

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Should you offer wine on tap at your bar?

Well we are of course going to say yes, we supplier it after all. Offering wine on tap makes sense in terms of flavour, cost-effectiveness, and from a sustainability point of view. It’s a growing trend that we can’t see slowing down, so there isn’t a better time to try it out. Check out our wine on tap offering, or get started with our range of dispensing equipment.

And if wine isn’t your thing, we also have a range of cocktails on-tap that might tickle your fancy.

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