Don’t bottle it! Why now is the perfect time to try wine from a keg, barrel, box or tin | Wine | The Guardian

Pubs and retailers say it’s greener, more cost-effective and guarantees the freshest glass possible – but can they convince consumers?

I am standing at the bar at the Canton Arms in Stockwell, south London, deliberating over the options on tap. There is a friulano from Veneto, a Provençal rosé, a beaujolais villages …

Yes, it’s not just pints they pull here, but neat little glasses of wine from kegs fitted underneath the bar, using the same chilling system as the lagers and ales. I go for a glass of the rosé. It’s cold, peach‑pale and delicious: everything I want from a glass of wine in summer.

Tap wine is having a bit of a moment. Rupert Taylor, the founder of Uncharted Wines, a merchant that specialises in the tap category, tells me that it sold 500 kegs to restaurants in 2018, its first full year of trading, but in the past 12 months it has shifted almost 12,000 kegs to 220 venues nationwide.

While it is not a new thing – Wetherspoons has been serving wine on tap for about 20 years – there has been a sea change in the quality of wine and calibre of restaurants and bars in which it has become available. For restaurants, wine bought in kegs dramatically reduces wastage and recycling costs; for customers, it can mean having a better glass of wine for less.

“I always used to drink beer in the pub because it was consistent, whereas you never knew how long a bottle of wine might have been open,” says Taylor. Usually, you have just a few days to drink a bottle of wine once it’s open, after which it oxidises and becomes unpleasant. By contrast, an open keg can stay good for months. Taylor supplies restaurants with everything from that “entry level” friulano in 30-litre barrels to a bone-dry ortega from Kent and premium buttery meursault in 10‑litre kegs – all to serve from taps.

Uncharted is not the only importer bringing wine in kegs into the UK, but it does have the biggest range, in number and price. Among the restaurants it supplies are Padella in London, Sète in Margate, Brauhaus in Edinburgh and Blacklock in London and, soon, Manchester. All are prime examples of “fine casual” dining, where the food is quick and simple, but of uncompromisingly high quality – the kind of place where you might want to try something new, rather than a whole bottle. But the high-end venues are on to it, too: Coombeshead Farm in Cornwall, for example, a darling of the British dining scene, has eight wines on tap. “They no longer have any waste wine with which to make vinegar,” says Taylor. You win some, you lose some.

Are customers apprehensive – suspicious, even – about drinking wine from a tap? “We do have a perception issue,” says Emily Jago, the group wine buyer at JKS Restaurants, which includes Bao and Hoppers in London. “Ultimately, though, I think customers simply want the nicest, freshest glass of wine at the best value – and with a wine on tap, they get that. I always emphasise that the last glass of wine from a keg will be as fresh as the first. In restaurants like Bao, where we don’t have a sommelier on the floor, it means we don’t have to expect less experienced staff to know when a bottle of wine is faulty.”

While tap wine is proving popular with restaurants, it is yet to make waves for consumers buying directly. Pubs sometimes offer their tap wine in refillable bottles at retail prices, but this is mainly reserved for a local crowd. Taylor agrees: “The refill thing has not caught on as much as tap wine in restaurants, possibly because of perception, but also because bottles are heavy and you have to be organised about bringing one to refill.” He suspects that most people do their wine buying online.

More successful with consumers, but facing many of the same challenges as wine on tap, is boxed (or “bag-in-box”) wine. Trevor Gulliver, the co-founder of St John restaurant in London, which has an adjacent wine importing company, tells me that it was the first Michelin-starred restaurant to sell boxed wine in the 90s. “It just made sense to me and we became quietly evangelical,” he says. “We were already working directly with producers in France and, with boxes, we could ship much more wine per pallet than bottles. That in itself has a direct carbon footprint [far fewer vehicles are needed for the same quantity of wine] and there’s also no bottle waste.”

Of course, St John doesn’t import exclusively boxed wines, but for its own-label table wines, which it brings over in bulk, it is more cost- and energy-efficient to do so in boxes.

Chris Wawak concurs. He launched Bobo Wines during the first Covid lockdown “to challenge the perception of boxed wine”, perturbed by the sound of glass bottles crashing into recycling bins in an otherwise eerily quiet London. The premise was simple: to source great organic wine from France and put it in fully recyclable 2.25-litre boxes, thereby lowering the cost and environmental impact of shipping it. His boxes also make sure producers are named and celebrated, unlike many traditional brand-oriented boxed wines. “It takes seven trucks to move the same amount of wine in bottles as one truck of boxes,” Wawak says – and that is before you factor in the cost of recycling glass.

Is it time to ditch bottles altogether? Probably not. For traditional drinkers of higher-end wines, there is still an expectation of a bottle, especially if a wine is intended to be aged. In fact, plenty of people still prefer a glass bottle, whether they drink premium wine or not, and there are more environmentally friendly ways of drinking it from glass. The English winemaker Sophie Evans, who grows and vinifies bacchus and pinot noir grapes in Kent, uses recycled burgundy bottles for her wine, which she says has one-third of the carbon footprint of using new glass.

But for younger, fresher styles of wine, such as the Provençal rosé I am quaffing in the pub, it’s a no-brainer to look to glass-free formats – not least in summer when, as Gulliver says, “you can take it to the park without needing a corkscrew”. Newer to the market than kegs or boxes, but perhaps best of all for a summer picnic, is canned wine.

Once I overcame my doubts about cracking open a tinnie of vino, I was delighted to discover some delicious wines made with minimal intervention, such as Entre Vinyes’ delicious Oniric pét nat. From a consumer perspective, canned wine may be the most sustainable, and indeed accessible, of the non-bottle wine formats – 100% recyclable and sold in small enough individual volumes that the prices seem particularly inclusive. Cans in Asda’s new Pica Pica range start at £2.50, as do Nice wines at Sainsbury’s and Amazon.

For everyone I speak to, great wine is the starting point, whether boxed, canned or on tap. “We source great-quality wine, put it in packaging that maintains its freshness and do right by the planet,” says Gulliver. I’ll raise my glass of tap rosé to that.

Celler Frisach Lo Pateret orange 2023 A brilliant skin-contact wine from a top Catalunyan producer. Uncharted’s Taylor says: “It usually bottles an amazing garnacha gris that has featured on the menu at Michelin restaurants, such as El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, for many years. In 2023, they decided not to bottle it, as it was not quite at the level they wanted for their top wine. But as an orange wine on tap, it is perfect.” Find it at Brauhaus in Edinburgh, Levan in Peckham, London, and Celentano’s in Glasgow.

Famille Chaudière Le Paradou Famille Chaudière produces some of the most respected wines in the Ventoux region of Provence. Le Paradou is its side project – fresh wines, simply made in stainless steel, which are perfect for warm days … and for serving on tap. Blacklock carries its cinsault rosé, while Sète offers its aromatic, peachy and mineral viognier.

Bobo Wines Château de Parnay Saumur-Champigny Loire valley reds, usually made with cabernet franc, as this is, are often served chilled. This one accentuates the perfect tension between red cherry fruit and the grassy, “green bell pepper” notes (as Chris Wawak puts it) that are typical of the grape. I love keeping a box of this in the fridge for a cool, fruity and delicious glass at the drop of a hat.

St John It’s hard to choose between the white, rosé and red, all blends from the south of France, although I have bought the rosé the most. Made with grenache and cinsault grapes in the Côtes de Thau, it’s ideal for summer parties, great as an aperitif, but with enough about it to accompany food. All three wines sell out quickly online, but are regularly restocked.

Canetta, Top Cuvée I love these snazzily packaged sets of low-intervention white, orange, rosé and red, all sourced from different winemaking regions in Catalunya. Like Djuce, Canetta is one of the premium options in the canned wine market – at £24.50 for four cans, it won’t be for everyone’s budget, although each can equates to a glass and a half and it’s a cost-effective way to try something new. Perfect for picnics.

Djuce Bubbles limited edition, Hoch Family, Austria Sparkling wine in a can just makes sense: you don’t have to open a whole bottle to have only a glass and you quaff it quickly, at its fizziest and coldest. Roisin Howard of Newcomer Wines, a UK Djuce retailer, says: “Christoph Hoch’s sparklings are full of beautiful minerality and acidity that rivals the French stuff,” adding that, on the trade side, this pét nat has been popular for preventing wastage. This is a blend of two aromatic grapes, grüner veltliner and muscat – think green apple, white peach and floral notes. Its ABV is only 10.5%, too. Nothing not to like!