Rockford Restaurant Unveils Wine On Tap. Here’s Why You Should Try It

NOTE: Much (I'm sure) to the chagrin of my company, I'm not receiving anything for this post. I just think that it's pretty cool, and as a former bartender myself, it fascinates me.

The Olympic has always been know to have some of the more diverse beer taps in town but now they're branching out with 5 new taps for their wine.

Is this a gimmick or a great new way to serve wine?

The Olympic put together a thread of their reasons wine on tap is superior. Let's take a look.

1. It's more efficient for our staff. No time wasted cutting foil, opening corks, carrying boxes of bottles and trashing them later.

Part of this rings true. Once you open a few bottles with a wine key, you realize it's the vastly superior way to open a bottle of wine and shouldn't take more than 10 seconds. However, storing multiple boxes of wine is a pain in the butt. The only liquor delivery that's worse to put away is the bottled beer delivery.

2. Improved quality & consistency. With wine on tap, there's no concerns about oxidation, broken corks or having a bottle sit open too long.

Makes total sense. No matter how good your stopper is, once you pop that cork, you've started a timer on the freshness of that bottle.

3. Better for the environment. One keg is about the same volume as 26 bottles of wine... less trash in landfills or recycling centers, less shipping and manufacturing waste.

Just not having to break down 2 dozen wine boxes after delivery would make it worth it alone.

4. Better selection. Since we worry less about wasting half of a bottle once opened, we can pour nicer wines. Kegged wine is pushed with nitrogen so every pour is like the first one out of a bottle. 

This pairs nicely with the second point. Keeping wine much fresher means they don't have to worry about a great wine going to waste if no one orders it after the first glass. This is a huge point.

I'm sure there are a lot more reasons, financial and logistically, that make sense for the restaurant but these points make a lot of sense for the consumer.

There's a really good video on the Free Flow YouTube channel that explains it all in 2 minutes.

There's only one way to see if it really is superior, and that's to check it out yourself. All 5 taps are flowing as of this Thursday, head down Main St. to test it out!