Already an important part of the on-trade wine offering in bars and restaurants across the United States, serving wine on tap is a rapidly growing trend in a number of other markets across the world, including the UK. The wines being served in this way bear no resemblance to the bag-in-box format seen in the past - this is a high quality way to serve high quality wine and many top wineries have already embraced wine in keg. This innovative approach has numerous benefits for the consumer, the bar/restaurant, the distributor, the supplier and the environment, and it is considered by many leading authorities to be a trend that will change the way wine is served across the service industry. Wine on tap benefits Fresh, consistent, delicious wine for customers Inert gas and storage at a constant temperature retain freshness so there is no deterioration between the first and last pours. With lower dry goods costs and cheaper distribution, the wine makes up a much higher proportion of the price of each glass, meaning better wine for less money.

Easy to use with less waste for on-trade businesses Our Petainer kegs use standard industry fittings and are simple to use, change and dispose of. Once tapped they can be kept for many months - eliminating the need to throw wine away at the end of a shift. One keg holds 20 litres, the equivalent of nearly 27 bottles of wine in a third of the space, and creates a tiny fraction of the physical waste.where to buy mini wine A simple way to deliver quality for producersbest white wine category Filling kegs is simple and takes a matter of minutes, with almost no risk of an error that will affect the condition of the wine. best food with port wineWine on tap delivers a consistent product at an easily regulated serving temperature, so it reaches the customer in exactly the condition intended by the winemaker.beer and wine blog

For more information see our FAQs "The enemies of wine are exposure to light, exposure to oxygen and termperature changes. We don't have any of those operational issues with wine on tap." Roberson Wine's full portfolio of products in keg stretches to over 50 wines, many of which are in stock now and available immediately. Prices start at c. £130 per 20 litre keg for house pours, up to £350+ for small production wines from artisanal producers. top wine shop londonThe range is always expanding, as increasing numbers of wineries understand the opportunity that wine in keg presents.best wine tours santiago chile For more information download our Wine on Tap brochure.One of my recurring fantasies is of having the house re-plumbed so that wine pours from every tap (except, perhaps, the shower – that would be sticky).

I’d start off with super-chilled sancerre and a really good sangiovese in the kitchen. On the roof terrace, maybe have the transparent, uplifting Two Paddocks Picnic Pinot Noir (Haynes, Hanson & Clark, £18.65). I’m sure the olive tree wouldn’t mind being watered with that instead. It’s so beautifully scented and easeful. There would be no annoying bottles littering the place up, and not only could I change wines every so often when I got bored, I could pour exactly as much wine as I wanted, from a thimble to a pint pot, every single time, with no waste. Something like this is now beginning to happen in restaurants. At Pizza Pilgrims in Soho, they don’t quite have wine running into the kitchen sink, but they do serve it on tap, from keg, as if it’s beer. It’s pretty basic stuff – “tumbler wine” – but it suits the venue and style of food. • 10 easy prosecco cocktails that everyone should master Other bars and restaurants around the country have experimented with prosecco on tap – infuriating the Italians who say that prosecco is only legally prosecco when it is bottled, and must otherwise be called “sparkling glera”.

Now Roberson, the pioneering wine merchant that brought us Britain’s first urban winery, is fitting out restaurants in the capital – and soon, I hope, beyond – with a high-quality “wine on tap” system for which they are supplying 50 different wines. Prosecco on tap has caused anger among the Italians (ALAMY) This being Roberson, we’re not just talking picpoul de pinet here (though, of course, there is one) but a selection of diverse and intriguing wines, from a delicious trousseau gris made by Wind Gap in California to a more traditional Lussac St Emilion, that promise to make the wine on tap experience contemporary and aspirational. “We’ve been talking about doing this for years,” says Lisa McCaghy of Roberson. “Wine on tap is a big trend in North America. I went to Vancouver a couple of years ago and was, like, 'Why aren’t we doing this?’ Others felt the same way and Mark Andrew has been the one who made it happen.” • Could the fizz from this Hampshire vineyard rival Champagne?

The first place to check out their system – the fridges are imported from the US, while the kegs are manufactured by a German company in the Czech Republic – was Rex & Mariano, the seafood restaurant in Soho, which began a three-month exclusive trial in December. They have made a glorious feature out of the gleaming stainless steel taps which are plumbed into a sheet of Carrara marble. “The system isn’t interchangeable with a beer one,” says Roberson’s Matteo Lupi. “It has to be a higher grade because wine is higher in acid. If you put wine through a beer pump, it completely stinks – you get terrible reduction from the interaction of the metal and the wine.” As a quality test, I compared a handful of wines poured directly out of bottle with the same wine served from keg. The two wines often tasted so different it was hard to believe they were the same, but my preferences (tap versus bottle) varied according to the wine and, in some cases, also how long the bottle had been opened.

For instance, a Lussac St Emilion from keg was far superior to the same Lussac St Emilion from a bottle that had been open a couple of days (as by-the-glass bottles in restaurants and bars so often are). I consider this a very positive sign. • The truth about wine awards: why medals don't mean great bottles Lower costs of dry goods at the winery – bottles and labels – and shipping (you can get a higher volume of wine on a pallet) mean that the restaurant can buy the wine for about 15 per cent less, a saving that if passed on to customers will mean a better glass of wine for the same money, or a smaller bill. An end to oxidised glasses of wine from a bottle that has been open too long is another plus and there are environmental benefits in not shipping tons of heavy glass bottles — or, indeed, using glass in the first place. The Roberson system is still in only a handful of restaurants – it's just gone into Burger & Lobster Threadneedle St and will be in Mission in Shoreditch from the weekend.

And in case you’re wondering, no, you can’t have it at home. At least, not unless you’re prepared to stump up a few grand for the equipment. Roberson supplies it free to restaurants on condition that the wine used in it is bought from them. Unless you are a really big drinker, you probably won’t get through enough wine for them to agree to do that for you at home. So you’d be looking at £5,000-£6,000 for the kit. Three wines Victoria enjoyed this week The Co-operative Truly Irresistable Leyda Valley Sauvignon Blanc 2014 Chile (13.5%, Co-op, £6.99) This wine comes from coastal Chile, where the vines are cooled by onshore Pacific breezes caused by the sweep of cold water up from Antarctica. This particular example is a pretty and juicy sauvignon blanc that tastes of snow peas, passion fruit and gooseberry fool dusted with icing sugar. Baron de Ley Rioja Reserva 2010 Spain (13.5%, Waitrose, £9.36 down from £12.49 until 2 June) Baron de Ley always nails it with rioja at this level (they’re behind the own-labels in a couple of supermarkets and I’d pay full price for this one — so on promotion, it’s a brilliant deal.