CREATE A MEMORABLE EXPERIENCE WITH WINE ON TAP
By Lee Anderson / SOMMELIER
I have a tattoo on my left lower arm. It is a sketch of an angel sitting on the moon with her red wings spread out behind her. It commemorates the bottle that began my love affair with wine. That bottle was not pricey or particularly fancy. It was Peter Jerman’s “Red Angel on the Moon”: a pinot noir.
What was special was everything that came with it: the perfectly polished glassware, the date I had been crushing on for weeks, the excellent food pairing, and the stellar service. The night was beautiful, and the wine was perfect.
As a sommelier and wine buyer who’s spent a majority of my career in fine dining, I would focus on recreating that moment for my guests. I wanted them to walk out of my restaurant feeling like they’ve spent the evening on a cloud with elegant service, great food, and (above all) a wine they’ll remember for a long time.
I wanted them to walk out of my restaurant feeling like they’ve spent the evening on a cloud with elegant service, great food, and (above all) a wine they’ll remember for a long time.
Years ago, if you’d told me I could do that with kegged wine, I would have been, well, let’s say... skeptical. No way could wine from a tap, from a steel keg, have the same effect as a bottle of Chablis chilling by the table.
I would have been wrong.
In the past five years, I’ve worked in fine Chicago restaurants that have highlighted kegged wine by the glass. The most recent was a steak house that prominently featured a seafood bar where guests could order extravagant towers of king crab and oysters while waiting for their table.
What would make a better pairing than a bottle of Chablis or a glass of Champagne? Simply put, a bright, refreshing, highly aromatic rose of pinot noir from a steel keg.
What would make a better pairing than a bottle of Chablis or a glass of Champagne? Simply put, a bright, refreshing, highly aromatic rose of pinot noir from a steel keg.
Not only was the wine delightful — a refreshing, tasty, easy choice to accompany seafood with an affordable price for a couple of glasses instead of just one — it was also kegged specifically for my restaurant and was thus unavailable on shop shelves or from neighboring restaurants.
From a buyer’s perspective, kegged wine is a dream.
From a buyer’s perspective, kegged wine is a dream. There’s rarely any waste; at the end of a shift, inevitably, two or three ounces of wine would get thrown out because the bottle stayed open too long. There’s never a question of corkage or flaws. You know what you’re getting every time. And your guests get a story to tell. A story about an amazing plate of shellfish and a cool, new wine they’d never seen elsewhere. They leave the building feeling as if they have dinned on a cloud.
And guess what? The wine was from a keg!
Lee Anderson is a sommelier studying through both the court of sommeliers and WSET. Last year she chose to move to Napa to try her hand at Harvest at Antica in Atlas Peak after extensive experience working as a sommelier and wine buyer in some of Chicago's best restaurants (including Sepia and the Boka group). Lee is eager to continue to dive into California's wine-making community and eager to learn as much as possible to pass on the knowledge to fellow students and sommeliers.