To keg or not to keg, that is the question preoccupying a number of winemakers these days. Despite gaining momentum in the casual wine bar and restaurant scene, it’s a delivery system that still makes some winemakers and venues — not to mention certain wine drinkers — a little uneasy.
While draft beer sales have been sluggishly sagging even after the post-pandemic reset — not to mention the questions swirling around the safety of non-alcoholic beer on tap — kegged wine and cocktails are having a moment. Pre-batched cocktails have been seizing both market territory and taps from brewers. And leading wine keg disruptors like Free Flow are claiming strong growth, with 2023 keg shipments supposedly up more than 25 percent year over year for the company despite an overall worrisome climate for the wine industry as a whole.
But despite the growth, packaging traditionalists, snobby oenophiles, and hesitant winemakers continue to pump the brakes on kegged wine’s surge into what should theoretically be a large slice of the on-premise market. What’s behind this reticence, and how legitimate are the concerns?
The Yes, Yes, and Yes of Keg Wine
The keg concept, at least on paper, should be a no-brainer and win-win all around.
“The sustainability aspect is huge,” says Jeff Carcara. “We’re keeping glass out of landfills and reducing the demand for new glass production.” As the CEO of Sixty Vines, a Dallas-based, multi-city upscale casual restaurant and wine bar concept that offers 60 wines on tap in each location, he admittedly has more than a little motivation to be a cheerleader for wine in kegs. But he sees several compelling reasons why more programs should get on board with the idea, and not just for their bottom line.
Kegged wine is far more ecologically sound than clanking through thousands of carbon-intensive glass bottles for BTG programs. “We’re also cutting down on waste from corks, labels, and foils,” Carcara says. It’s also a godsend for program directors and barkeeps. Anyone who has suffered through a lunch, happy hour, or dinner rush on the floor or behind the rail has picked up more than a dash of PTSD from panicked restock runs to the cellar or a broken bottle in the ice well. Kegs reduce the occurrence of these aptly named bottlenecks.
And then there’s the financial win for both winery and venue: margin. “Kegging cuts out costs like glass, corks, labels, foils, packaging, and bottling logistics,” Carcara says. “The only cost is for the kegging itself, which can really boost a winery’s profit if managed well.”
For restaurant and bar wine programs otherwise beset by waste from open-bottle oxidation, breakage, and good old-fashioned cork taint? Eliminate that — and combine with the generally lower cost per liter of kegged wine — and the savings add up over time, rather quickly offsetting the expense of tap system installation.
Kinks in the Tap Line
At a basic level, kegs are offered in two formats: one-way and returnable.
One-way kegs, usually made from PET (polyethylene terephthalate, a type of recyclable plastic), are filled at the winery, shipped via standard distribution channels, then discarded via recycling. They offer simplified logistics and make the most sense for small production lots.
As for kegs of the returnable sort, they’re typically made of stainless steel and have a repeatable, closed-loop life cycle handled by a contracted kegging operator like Free Flow. Such companies fill kegs, ship them to customers, pick them up from customers, clean, and repeat. They tend to work best with somewhat larger-scale production lots and well-established distribution routes to regular, repeat customers.
“It’s critical to partner with a wine keg vendor that has a strong enough customer base. [That] ensures quick turnover both in the keg and remaining bulk wine inventory waiting to be kegged.”
“We started selling wine in kegs in 2009,” says Santa Barbara winemaker Greg Brewer, founder of Brewer-Clifton and Diatom. It’s worked well for his popular Diatom Chardonnay label, though it’s the only kegged cuvée he’s focused on for now. He was won over by “producing and distributing on a somewhat larger scale with improved logistics,” but admits there’s difficulty managing the closed-loop distribution method when it comes to limited-production wine. “There are challenges with keg sales on a small scale with regard to delivery and retrieval,” he says, “The one-way recyclable style is great, though the [PET] material has a somewhat limited shelf life.”
John Olney, head winemaker for California’s famed Ridge Vineyards, is a more recent convert to the keg club. Despite some prior reluctance, he was impressed with the end result. “Exposure to air and headspace was my biggest concern,” he says. “But in March 2023, I tried the Ridge 2021 ‘Three Valleys’ from a freshly tapped keg. It tasted very similar to our bottled version.”
Ridge, too, is focused on a single kegged offering, and Olney’s reasoning echoes that of Brewer. “This is our entry level Zinfandel meant for early consumption, so kegging made sense,” he says. As one of Ridge’s largest-production cuvées, the math of scale and resupply work out. But don’t expect to see Monte Bello on tap at your local wine bar anytime soon.
Additionally, the specific kegging collaborator of choice reveals another potential drawback. Like Brewer, Olney also tapped Free Flow for his kegs due to the company’s relatively broad reach and robust logistics. But smaller closed-loop keg operations — while otherwise potentially doing fine work — could possibly throw an unintentional wrench in the gears. Wine kegs are designed to keep wine fresh for up to 12 months unopened and three months after tapping. But beyond that year, the dice begin to roll. “It’s critical to partner with a wine keg vendor that has a strong enough customer base,” Olney says. “[That] ensures quick turnover both in the keg and remaining bulk-wine inventory waiting to be kegged.”
Finding the Right Fit for Wine on Tap
What about the other fly in the ointment of keg wine adoption: the psychology of wine on tap for both consumers and winemakers?
Winemakers, with very good reason, have a bit of a reputation as control freaks. These individuals and their teams are tasked with managing a highly technical, detailed process while still honoring the high-minded ideals of wine. But opting to keg, they’re placing the same trust they usually reserve for a vetted cork provider into the hands of whatever individual bar or restaurant is tapping their wine.
Cork taint worries become dirty draft line concerns. Granted, there’s equivalency to this equation. One never knows just how well a retailer maintains their storage temperature either, or how long that BTG bottle has been open at the local wine bar. But getting winemakers to place trust in someone different than they’re accustomed to? Some resistance — fair or not — is to be expected.
As for the psychology of consumers, God knows we love our beer on tap. A fresh pint after a long day at work is a pretty universal desire — that first-sip malty mustache a Friday badge of accomplishment. But wine sloshing unceremoniously into a glass from an anonymous tap, sans that evocative bottle clank and cork pop? Admit it. It just doesn’t have the same surface appeal.
“Today’s consumers, especially Gen Z and millennials, crave experiences. You can taste a bunch of wines, pair small pours with different foods, and try new things without spending a lot.”
Perhaps part of the issue is brand and label connection. The beer world invests heavily in its tap handle designs. They know that when a familiar tap handle catches the eye of a thirsty devotee, there’s a Pavlovian response. “[Wine] kegs lack the connection that a label on the bottle offers,” Olney says.
It’s a missed opportunity — a billboard rented yet left blank. Sure, custom tap handles have their associated costs to design, produce, and distribute. But when dealing with a year-in-and-year-out cuvée like Ridge’s “Three Valleys” Zinfandel or Brewer’s “Diatom” Chardonnay, wouldn’t a custom tap handle be the next obvious step?
Wine on tap is just scratching the surface of its full potential. And truthfully, its impressive attributes on all fronts outweigh most detriments. “More traditional wine drinkers may shy away from wine in keg, [but] younger drinkers are more open,” says Olney. Indeed, it’s probably all just a matter of time, acclimation, scale, and a few marketing bells and whistles. The generational transition might just harken a bright future for kegged wine. “Today’s consumers, especially Gen Z and millennials, crave experiences,” says Carcara. “You can taste a bunch of wines, pair small pours with different foods, and try new things without spending a lot.”
Admittedly, it’ll never be a perfect fit for every wine and every consumer, and winemakers like Brewer and Olney don’t see the glass bottle becoming outright banished by the likes of kegs. But kegged wine meant for early consumption is a brilliant concept of noble intent and economic common sense for the right situations, and it may well prove to be a potent ally amidst a wobbly global moment for wine.
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