City Winery House wine by the TAP

Finally, we have our house wines available on TAP.

We borrowed some refrigeration tricks from the beer industry and we are still fine tuning the service temperature but it is happening! Our house wines (Sohovignon Blanc and Central Park Rosé) have been ready to pour for a few weeks but we were awaiting label approval in order to legally sell them (labels are affixed to the kegs situated in our basement; government regulations are always full of surprises!!).

Serving our house wines by the TAP is something I desired from the start for city winery. When I first proposed this people thought the concept was cute but didn't take it too seriously. Eric Asimov's New York Times article gave me sudden credibility (I guess I was not eloquent enough to convince folks by myself!!).

In Europe, bulk wine "vin en vrac" does not always carry connotation of poor quality. When you know the right spot and the right wine (either local wineries or a wine shop), it is often a good way to get pleasant everyday wines for a great price. Wine by the TAP is similar but for a winemaker it opens many doors.

Lower stress:
Pretty obviously, wines by the tap do not need to be bottled!! One of the worst tasks for any winemaker is bottling; there are always last minute problems (not enough glass, not enough labels, incorrect labels, not enough staff, wine plugging during the final filtration, the threat of microbial infection during bottling, equipment breakdowns, etc.). During the winemaking process, we work hard caring for the wines. We witness our wines fermenting and maturing in front of us. This evolution is usually slow and we can influence it if it goes awry. All our attention and care provided over 6 to 18 months can be wasted if we encounter any problems during bottling. No bottling makes our lives easier – don't we all lean towards that?

Minimal SO2:
When bottling a wine, most wineries will push up the SO2 content to prevent any chance of microbial infection during bottling and to preserve the wine after bottling (recall the obvious sulfite odor found in many recently bottled sweet white wines such as German Riesling). I have not added any SO2 to the Sauvignon Blanc in 3 months because I did not need to do so. The wine is stored at 60F and covered with inert argon. We simply don't need to do anything more to protect the wine.

Truth In wine:
Given the wine's character (our sauvignon blanc did not go through malo-latic fermentation), we would have to sterile filter the wine if wanted to bottle it safely. Such a tight filtration would damage the wine (decrease richness and can induce some dryness) but be necessary to insure stability on the long run.

Greener product:
NO supplies (cork, label, foil, bottle, boxes) to purchase/ receive/ store. NO waste. BIG deal! Yes! This is sweet!!

Reduced wine losses:
No need to worry about an oxidized bottle opened last week or unsatisfied customers complaining that our wine is corked.

More fun / unique wines:
There are always some small batches of wine which are odd but interesting somehow. They are usually light or hard press wines kept separate from the classic free run wines. We are speaking about 15 to maybe 60 gallon lots; no way to do a bottling with these volumes because of bottling costs and because there wouldn't be enough to market with so few cases. However, we can feature such a wine on tap as a special "barrel/ keg of the week".

Fewer worries:
You can't imagine how many ways a wine can go bad in bottle. It rarely happens because we take great care to prevent any potential chemical instability (protein and tartaric precipitation for whites, copper case and color instability for reds, TCA/corked bottles) or microbial instabilities (re-fermentation in bottle, Brettanomyces development in bottle...). Just as an example, our Sauvignon Blanc has some fresh aromas of citrus, hawthorn with a lively month feeling, it may not be tartaric stable, meaning than a few harmless tartaric crystals might appear (tartaric crystals do not change the wine's taste but their appearance may make the wine unmarketable), but I do not have to worry about it because the wine is stored at 60F in the cellar and is chilled down to service temperature en route to the tap. Even if a few crystals appear, they will be in the bottom of the kegs.

Wine education:
We can also build educational value from our wines by the tap. For example, we could offer the same wine aged in French vs. American oak barrels to guests.

To conclude:
Wines by the Tap makes sense for city winery. It enables us to prepare our house wines with minimal winemaking intervention: no filtration (or light one if needed), no fining for white wine, no SO2 addition before sale. Basically our wines are closer to their true nature – raw.

Wines by the TAP at city winery will be a unique experience for our guests. While other wines by the tap programs are appearing in sophisticated cities at restaurant and retails shops, these cannot offer what City Winery does: we are producing wines on site in Soho. We can take risks others cannot. We can offer one keg of unique wine if it is tasting great this week. We can offer a wine at different stages of its life. We can serve our wines fresh and alive since we don't have to stabilize them for shipment them across the continent.

Whenever on tap, in barrel or in bottle, have a good glass of wine.

David Lecomte / Robert Kowal