Tapping Into Wine

Restaurants and bars hail wine on tap as greener, fresher and less expensive than bottles.

April 05, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Patrons at the bar in OTD can order a glass of wine straight from the tap, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Several local restaurants and bars are adding wine to their spigots to save money, reduce waste and deliver a fresher taste to customers.

Pioneered by Dough Washington and Mitchell and Steven Rosenthal at Salt House restaurant in 2006, other area restaurants followed suit in the years since, including OTD, Coda, Annabelle??s Bar & Bistro, Delfina, Frances, Ironside, Tavern and Chop Bar.

"You??re going to see this explode," said Washington, also co-owner of Town Hall and Anchor & Hope. "It??s the most PC thing you could possibly ever imagine. If you took your car at 1 a.m. and drove around the back alleys behind every restaurant, you??d see huge recycling cans overflowing with empty wine bottles. Some were wines that were served at the table, but a huge majority of guests never even saw that bottle. It went behind the bar and was poured into glasses."

Because the wine is kept from oxygen on a tap system, it stays fresher much longer than open bottles. Wines offered at these restaurants and bars are not the cheap jug wines, but higher quality varieties.

The price for a glass of wine from the tap can be considerably lower than from a bottle, which can encourage customers to try different wines. The trend is spreading from the East Coast to the West Coast.

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement