QUALITY. INNOVATION. SERVICE. SUSTAINABILITY.

OUR MISSION

As the pioneers of premium wine on tap, Free Flow’s mission is to deliver the freshest, best tasting, most sustainable glass of wine. Our keg leasing, filling and logistics services have allowed the wine and hospitality industries to move to a greener, fresher, better way to serve wine by the glass. We are passionate about what we do and always looking for new ways to think outside the ‘bottle’.

Founded in 2009, Free Flow has more than 250 wine brands in keg from wineries throughout the world. Premium wines in Free Flow kegs are available at restaurants, hotels, retail stores, sports and entertainment venues across the US. Free Flow Wines currently has locations in Sonoma, California and Bayonne, New Jersey.

PEOPLE

Rich Bouwer

Chief Executive Officer

Rich joined Free Flow as Chief Operating Officer in 2018 to oversee Operations, Finance & Supply Chain. Rich began his career in the wine industry in 1990. Since then he has held senior positions with Saxco International, Beringer and Gallo, sourcing wine bottles in the US, Central America, Europe and Asia and providing packaging to more than 1,000 wineries. Rich is delighted to be part of the Free Flow team and relishes the opportunity to change the way premium wines are delivered to consumers. In his free time Rich enjoys open water swimming, college sports, and spending time with his family.

Rob Perman

Vice President, Operations

Rob joined Free Flow in 2010 as employee number one. Rob has more than 10 years of experience in all facets of wine production, and more than 5 years in wine sales. With production experience from J Vineyards to Dana Estate, and sales experience from Gallo, Rob’s attention to detail and focus on quality ensures that our production facility is running smoothly at all times.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

John R. Muse

Chairman

John R. Muse has been a principal in the private equity business for over 24 years, starting with Hicks, Muse & Co., which he founded with Tom Hicks in 1989. Prior to founding Hicks, Muse, he was an investment banker after serving as an officer in the Air Force. He is currently Non-Executive Chairman of Kainos Capital, a successor firm to Hicks Muse. After this recent rebranding, he has stepped away from his day to day chief executive responsibilities. He has acquired control of Lucchese, the leading manufacturer of western boots, and serves as its Chairman. He serves on a number of public and private company boards, the Anderson School of Management Board at UCLA, and is active here as a founding member of the Klyde Warren Park Foundation. He also led his Class of 1973 gift as title sponsor of the National Character and Leadership Symposium at the United States Air Force Academy.

Albert Baldocchi

Mr. Baldocchi has been self-employed since 2000 as a financial consultant and strategic advisor for a variety of privately-held companies, with a specialization in multi-unit restaurant companies. His extensive involvement with restaurant companies over a period of 17 years has given Mr. Baldocchi an in-depth knowledge of restaurant company finance, operations and strategy.

Lane Cardwell

Lane is a veteran of the chain restaurant industry. He is the president of Cardwell Hospitality Advisory, and is active as a board member for several restaurant and restaurant related businesses. Currently he serves on the boards of Ruby Tuesday, Shari’s Restaurants, Sushi Zushi, Falcon Realty Advisors, Zipscene, Free Flow Wines, and is chairman of a restaurant group in Saudi Arabia.
He has been on the senior management team or board of 44 restaurant concepts, with the majority serving wine and other alcoholic beverages. In the past he has been the president of P.F. Chang’s China Bistro, CEO of Boston Market, and CEO of Eatzi’s Market and Bakery. During his 11 years with Brinker International he was Chief Administrative Officer and a member of its board. He eats in 600 restaurants a year to stay current on trends and developments.

Richard M. Gerstein

Mr. Gerstein has been involved in transportation and logistics since his childhood. His father founded and owned a large regional trucking company in Chicago, where Mr. Gerstein worked part time throughout his childhood. This early experience led to his career in transportation and logistics, and that career shaped the vision and strategic direction he brought his company, IntelliTrans, which was sold to a large public company in 2006. With over 25 years of professional industry experience, a BA in Political Economy of Industrialized Societies and an MS in Transportation Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, Mr. Gerstein now spends considerable time investing his energy with companies and causes in areas in which his expertise can have significant value.

Gary Horton

Gary is the Chief Investment Officer in the Muse Family Office and the Managing Partner/CEO of Preservation Capital Management, a fixed income money management firm jointly owned between the Muse family and himself. Gary has over 35 years of experience in the investment management industry. Prior to joining the Muse Family Office in 2008, he spent six years at Tolleson Wealth Management in Dallas. While at Tolleson, Gary served as the Chief Investment Officer, and Director of Fixed Income and Research. Previous to this, Gary worked for several Wall Street firms, including First Boston and Morgan Stanley. Gary earned his B.A. in economics from The University of Texas at Austin and received his M.B.A from SMU’s Cox School of Business. Currently, Gary serves on the Ursuline Academy of Dallas Board of Trustees, the Cox School of Business Alumni board of directors and the Associate Board at Southern Methodist University, and several boards of private companies.

Walt Klenz

Mr. Walter T. Klenz served as the Managing Director, Chairman and CEO of Fosters Group Ltd, the Managing Director, President and CEO of Beringer Wine Estates, Chairman for The Wine Institute, President of Napa Valley Vintners Association, and the director for America West Airlines. Mr. Klenz has served on varies boards including America West Holdings Corp. and Vintage Wine Trust, Inc. and currently, he serves as a director of Vincraft Group, Columbia Sportswear Co., and J. Lohr Winery. Mr. Klenz brings a combination of global branding, distribution, financial and operational expertise to the Board.

Jordan Kivelstadt

Jordan co-founded Free Flow Wines in 2009 and lead the growth of the business for the first 10 years. Jordan was trained as an engineer at Tufts University before moving on to management consulting for over two years. In 2006, Jordan began his career in the wine industry as production manager for The Donum Estate. Since then he has made wine in four countries, founded his own bottle brand, Kivelstadt Cellars, manages his family’s organic 10-acre Sonoma County, California vineyard and continues to innovate in the industry he loves.

FACILITY

State-of-the-art kegging and production facility

Vetted by the world’s most sophisticated quality control teams, our processes and procedures were developed entirely in-house, to ensure that premium wines get from the barrel to the tap, tasting exactly the way the winemaker intended. Our fully automated kegging line cleans and fills kegs, ensuring that every keg is wine-ready. Our facility is also home to a custom water reclamation system that cleans over 95% of our wastewater for reuse. To improve our logistical footprint and offer additional services to wineries looking to fill on the east coast, Free Flow Wines opened an East Coast Filling Station in Bayonne, New Jersey in 2017.

CLEANING & FILLING

Certified by some of the wine industries leading companies, our cleaning Standard Operating Procedures are the best in the industry. Our state-of-the-art automated keg filling machine can clean and fill up to 70 kegs per hour. This machine washes the kegs inside and out, sanitizes each keg with caustic, citric, and steam, and then cools the kegs back down before being purged with Nitrogen & filled with wine.

Each of our kegs is

Rinsed with water
Cycled with hot caustic
Cycled with Citric
Sterilized with steam
Purged with Nitrogen

This process ensures total sterility of the inside of our kegs.

PACKAGING

Packaging kegs is different than bottles because each keg has to have an approved TTB collar applied to its neck prior to distributor fulfillment. Free Flow ensures that every keg is certified by providing you with a keg collar template, COLA compliance filing, printing services, excise tax management as well as the application of the collars and tamper proof caps. Once packaged, kegs are palletized and stored in a temperature controlled and reliable warehouse.

“Wine on tap defines our business; it didn’t exist prior to launching Free Flow in 2009. The benefits of the draft had been proven with beer, and our innovative founders saw the opportunity to bring the quality and environmental benefits of the draft to the wine industry. We have pioneered the category since and remain the leaders in providing kegging services for wineries. “

– Rich Bouwer, CEO of Free Flow Wines

CALIFORNIA GREEN BUSINESS NETWORK

CERTIFIED BUSINESS

THE PORTO PROTOCOL

CERTIFIED MEMBER

CALIFORNIA RESOURCE RECOVERY ASSOCIATION

OUTSTANDING "CLOSING THE LOOP" COMMITMENT AWARD RECIPIENT

GREEN RESTAURANT ASSOCIATION