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available, and they’ve always considered them
being their beer taps,” said O’Shea, “so [the
challenge] is kind of getting places to be open-
minded or consider putting in an additional tap
or line.”
That was not a problem for Bolter. “I was
always open to it, but I’m a wine professional
and I understand it,” he said. “Most people
have jobs that don’t involve wine, so they don’t
think about it like I do, so it’s something that’s
novel to people, and it’s just a bit of education
and discussion.”
Bolter says his customers are often interested in wines on tap but can have a
hard time with the concept of wine being delivered from such a large container.
“Some consumers immediately think of bag-in-a-box wine, which has traditionally
been less expensive, not very interesting wines that you can get at supermarkets,”
he said. “We have to work with our guests so they understand that we can have very
high-end wine on tap and it doesn’t impact the flavor at all, and it’s actually fresher.”
Bolter says that once customers
understand the process and the benefits
of kegged wine, there is a bit of a “cool
factor” that becomes attached to it.
Nate O’Shea at Great Frogs agrees,
especially when it comes to younger
wine drinkers. “People don’t look down
upon it. It’s actually kind of a cool thing,”
he said. “They don’t care about all of the
things that the older generation cared
about. They just want to have good
wine.”
Another benefit of kegging wines
is that it saves winemakers money
in bottling and storage, which can
then be passed on to the consumer.
(Unfortunately, Bolter says that not all
wineries he deals with pass along the
savings like he would hope, which has
kept him from expanding his wine-on-
tap program.) It also saves restaurants
money because they don’t have to
worry about opening bottles that they do
not sell every glass of wine from.
“If you have it tapped, you’re not
going to be losing any of the volume
because it’s protected by the CO
2
,”
explained Andrea O’Shea.
Kegged wine is not a new concept
P H O T O O N B O T T O M C O U R T E S Y O F G R E A T F R O G S W I N E R Y ; T O P C O U R T E S Y O F R E D R E D W I N E B A R
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