Wine On Tap Anxiety: What To Do When There’s No Wine Bottle in Sight

Ordering wine at a restaurant is changing fast, and traditional glass bottles are no longer the only option on the table. This episode of Everyday Sommelier dives into the hottest restaurant wine trend: alternative wine packaging—from wine on tap and kegs to cans, Bag-in-Box, and eco-friendly recycled bottles. 

Kristi Mayfield explores what’s driving this seismic shift, including sustainability, lower costs, and fresher wine by the glass. Plus, learn why restaurants and wine bars are doubling down on non-traditional packaging and how it benefits adventurous wine drinkers looking for variety without waste!

Ever wondered whether kegged wine or wine in a can can match your favorite bottle? Kristi breaks down freshness and quality myths, covers the environmental impact, and explains how alternative formats are making wine more approachable (and fun!). Get practical tips for trying these new options the next time you spot them on a restaurant wine list—including how to get the most out of your next group dinner and why these changes aren’t just a fad.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL DISCOVER: 

• How wine on tap, kegs, and cans solve restaurant wine waste and freshness issues. 
• The cost and sustainability advantages of alternative wine packaging for both restaurants and drinkers. 
• Why you should challenge traditional wine stereotypes and embrace new packaging for a better by-the-glass experience. 
• How to confidently order and enjoy wine from kegs, cans, or bags at your next restaurant outing.

Timestamps:

00:00:51 – The Rise of Wine on Tap: How Restaurants Are Changing the Game
00:03:06 – Reducing Waste and Saving Costs: Why Restaurants Embrace Wine Kegs
00:07:46 – Boxed Wine’s Resurgence: Quality, Freshness & Perception
00:09:28 – Canned Wine for Outdoor Dining: Safety, Portion Control, and Younger Consumers
00:12:23 – Making the Leap: How to Confidently Try Alternative Wine Packaging
00:13:55 – Sustainability Trends: Recycled Bottles, Tetra Packs & The Future of Restaurant Wine Service

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Transcript

Kristi Mayfield (00:00)
You're adventurous, you're in the know, and you are always up for trying out a new restaurant or new concept that comes to town. So reservations are made, the friend group is committed, you show up, you're led to your table, the menu and wine list is plopped down on the table in front of you. There are so many delicious dishes that you and your friends decide to mix it up and order several appetizers, several entrees, and share them community style across the table.

And now for the wine list. There's four of you. So you skip right on past the wines by the glass and you focus on the bottle list. Wait, the bottle list. Where's the bottle list? Wine in a carafe, not a bottle? What the heck? Your eyes transition over to the bar for clarity. You see beer dispensers, the bottles of spirits. Then it hits you.

Right there on the bar is wine on tap dispenser. Yes, wine on tap. You got it right. And your first thought is, ⁓ maybe I should just order a gin and tonic. But your adventurous side kicks in. And instead, you look through the list and you see things like these gorgeous aromatic whites that sound delicious, carbonic reds you've never heard of, and so many more. It's time to think differently about non-traditional wine packaging.

So let's get going and flip the page from a restaurant experience perspective.

Nearly every week I get a text from a friend with a picture of a wine followed by a question, what wine should I order? Now I love this. Not only do I get to glimpse inside wine lists that I might not ever really get to experience in person, but I also get to encourage my friends to think outside of their comfort zone and try a new wine. Last week, the list was from a beer

and wine garden that had a decent number of wines on tap, meaning they came from a keg. Now, a few of these were brands I actually knew, and one was even on my frequent rotation at my house, even though was a different varietal. But the one that caught my eye was a carbonic Carignan It caught my attention, and I found myself truly wishing that I was at the table to share a carafe of that wine and explore it along with.

my friend. The alternative packaging trend is not just for you as a consumer. Restaurants, wine bars, cocktail lounges alike are looking for new ways to keep their customers excited, but also to be able to focus on things like sustainability, quality, cost, and more. And my goal today is to highlight how you can maximize your own wine journey through the innovation.

your favorite haunts might be offering to you with alternatively packaged wines. In last episode, we covered cans, bags in a box, Tetra packs, and more, all focused on preserving wine while offering you lower cost, lower environmental impact, and ultimately lower waste in the wine industries. But restaurants and bars are also taking note and exploring their own ways of leveraging alternative packaging trends

to give you amazing wine experiences while moving away from the traditional glass bottle. I the bottom line is, bottles can be costly for restaurants when it comes to both, one, finding places to store them or store them in climate controlled spaces, and two, by offering you that ever important wines by the glass program that we all love and keep you going back to that restaurant

again and again and again. But think of this scenario. What happens when you are the only one who orders a glass of the Viognier by the glass that week? That bottle sits in the fridge at that restaurant gathering dust, but worse going bad each and every day. One glass might possibly cover the cost of that bottle depending upon the restaurant's markup, but it's

definitely not going to drive bottom line profits. And surprisingly, this scenario happens time and time again. And personally, I think it's super sad when a wine gets dumped down the drain because it doesn't sell and moves well past its prime. So let's explore some common alternative packaging concepts that restaurants are leaning into to both make your experience amazing, but also to align with

their own sustainability and profit targets.

Let's start off with that wine on tap or kegged wine. More and more restaurants are popping up that are using kegged wine programs. They're growing in popularity and getting significant traction in restaurants, bars, and particularly those who want to focus on the on-premise buy the glass service we all know and love. However, there's a tremendous cost element

to being able to initiate a kegged wine or wine on tap program because there's specialized dispensing equipment that may or may not necessarily be suitable for all styles of wines they may want on their wine list and they are not designed for long-term aging. However, in circumstances, the wines in a keg

can stay fresh for up to six months. You heard me right, six months. Now this can seriously reduce not only the packaging waste of all of those bottles, but also the waste of potentially having to pour the wine from those bottles down the drain when it goes bad in a couple of days rather than a couple of months. From a packaging and shipping perspective,

Wines in kegs are a great alternative for restaurants willing to make the initial investment in the equipment needed to serve them. However, you, me, other wine consumers, we may still have a stigma about the quality of wines by the keg, but let's instead focus on the benefits. It eliminates that need for single use bottles. These wines are poured into a glass,

or as I mentioned into a carafe that can be washed and reused, washed and reused time and time again, eliminating the need for any glass waste. For the wines that are specifically designed for early drinking, wines and kegs can stay fresh for months and dramatically minimize spoilage, which is a huge cost element for restaurants.

it's a super sustainable option. And we're seeing more and more of these creative restaurants popping up all over, especially in the US.

Now, bags in a box may seem like they just don't necessarily have a place in restaurants. However, once again, a buy the glass program, that airtight bladder and the simple tap system we see in bag in a box prevents those wines from getting oxidized, going bad, and it preserves the freshness for weeks, even months after opening.

So from a perspective of sustainability, this is a phenomenal option, just like kegs for restaurants who want to focus on delivering you a great buy the glass option. They're significantly less material and because of the size and shape of the box, they can fit easily into refrigerators and stay at the right temperatures without going bad and without the risk of all of those glass bottles tumbling over.

breaking and losing that product. From a cost perspective, you can get larger formats in a bag and a box than the 750 milliliters you get in a bottle. Or if you go with magnums and other larger size bottle formats, the cost increases dramatically. Perceptions, however, are going to be the hardest trigger

to change when it comes to having a wine by the glass program that features bags in a box because we still have a perception of those inexpensive cheap and cheery wines in boxes of yesteryear.

we really should give bag in a box wines a fresh start. Cans are probably the easiest transition point for a restaurant to move away from glass bottles because they're lightweight, they're unbreakable, they're easy, to use, especially if there's a significant outdoor space where glass is often prohibited. And for consumers who are focused on portion control, single serving cans

absolutely cater to the consumer who doesn't want to invest in a full bottle and wants to try multiple different styles without the risk of a price point that the bottle comes with. from a sustainability perspective, recycling cans is something we've been doing for decades. And let's be candid.

Glass itself can be a real hazard, not only in outdoor scenarios like patios, around pools, outdoor dining environments where if a glass bottle breaks, all things freeze to a halt until that service team can get every single microscopic fragment cleaned up to make sure that guests are safe and protected.

And as we try to bring more and more young consumers into wine, cans are ideally accommodating for younger demographics who are just transitioning from maybe beer or seltzers that are already in cans. And it's a easy transition to grab that wine in a can as your next experimental stop.

And finally, lightweight bottles, recycled glass bottles, even the paper and plant based bottles are all allowing restaurants to participate sustainability, participate in reducing carbon footprints. recycled bottles used in the same way as beer at craft breweries. I know in my town we have craft breweries where you can

go buy a growler, is a big glass jug of beer. Drink it within a couple of days and take it right back to that brewery. They will sanitize it, reuse it, and you can grab another bottle on your way out the door. Wine bottles can be treated in that same way Wineries can

sanitize them, reuse them, and incentivize customers like yourself for bringing them back and allowing them to use them again and again.

it's about shifting our perspective away from the traditional glass bottle to non-traditional wine packaging formats.

So what should you do when you find yourself in a situation at a restaurant where you're not familiar with the alternative packaging that restaurant is embracing? I say take full advantage of it. Start with the smaller serving, whether that's by the glass from that wine tap selection or from a single can.

It is your opportunity to have a low risk introduction into something you definitely would not have tried if your only option was to buy it by the bottle. And these concepts are popping up all over and it is our opportunity to really buy into sustainability and alternative packaging in a totally different way.

and to think of wine as something more friendly and accessible instead of the formality of having to pop a cork and pour wine from a 750 milliliter glass bottle. Embrace the trend and embrace restaurants, wine bars, and cocktail lounges that are shifting gears from tradition and giving you a whole new experience.

some friends and join me in embracing alternative packaging from cans to plastic bottles to Tetra packs to the eponymous wine in a box. to follow more trends, make sure that you are following Kristi K-R-I-S-T-I, Everyday Sommelier on Instagram. And please share.

your thoughts on this episode and all of the episodes of Everyday Sommelier by writing a review and leaving a five star rating on Apple podcast or Spotify or whatever platform you're tuning into today. Now in our next episode, we are going to dive deeper into our food and wine experimentation and possibly taking it to the spicy side of life. So grab a glass of your favorite wine.

or grab a can of a new wine you're giving a try and don't forget to learn wine your way.