Wine on Tap? the future is here.

Hmmm...well then all that technology to avoid the intake of air does make sense. It's also nice that the wine barrels are able to be reused. Ignorant question coming next but why do perpetual motion machines not like oxygen? And an example of one such machine would be? CD

I think that they were using five gallon soda kegs for the wine, which homebrewers have been using for years.
Regarding the perpetual motion machine, 100% efficiency is just not possible . . . same thing with these systems for wine . . . you can approach 100%, but not quite attain it.

[Robin Garr]

Ignorant question coming next but why do perpetual motion machines not like oxygen? And an example of one such machine would be? CD

Sorry to be so obscure, Catherine. Perpetual motion machines are impossible because 100 percent efficiency is impossible in the mechanical world. There is always some loss. Keeping oxygen out of wine is sort of like that, too.

As a disclaimer, I'm a beer and coffee guy, not a wine guy. But I am a physicist, and having opened and run a microbrewery for several year I can discuss pushing liquids around with the best of them.

A couple comments:
1. Cleaning lines. Very important. Beer House (distributors) sends a guy out every week or two (I forget) to clean all of our lines. Nice. If it isn't being done at your establishment, check into it. It makes a big difference. It costs (the distributor) ten or fifteen bucks for five lines. Not much for improved quality. It would need to be done on wine lines similarly. If not, then you're not going to have quality products.
2. Yeah, push the product with CO2 or Nitrogen. Beer is carbonated, wine isn't, so you'd have to keep low pressure. You could gravity feed it, and keep a super low pressure, thus eliminating oxygen, and also not carbonating your wine. Zip zip.

Cheers, it'd be nice to see the packaging (and price) reduced....
-Nimbus

Thanks Robin, I get it now! "Gravity feeding" I think that was what I was trying to allude to in my post. Reason being, I think of wine as very precariously balanced. Delicate stuff heavily affected by the introduction of any foreign. More so than beer. However, I love the idea of ridding the world of a bit more packaging. CD

Forgive me, but I am about to show my age. In the mid to late 80's there was a company producing wine in kegs. You may have heard of it, Anheuser Busch. Remember when wine coolers such as California Coolers were around? You know, back when they were really made with wine? Anheuser Busch got in the wine business with a low calorie cooler called Dewey Stevens and man, it was a dog with fleas! They also produced wine in beer kegs. I was a wine wholesaler at the time, and we placed these in a few accounts around town but it was a real pain as we (salespeople) had to run the lines and hook up the system. I am sure A-B did not produce the wine themselves but contracted with a winery for production. A-B's attempt at breaking into (breaking bad?) the wine business was a complete failure and they gave up the ship after a few years.
Jerry Rogers

To answer a few questions from this thread.

1. Brix is still around.
2. Guinness does use a mixed gas, it isn't pure CO2. I don't know the ratio though.
3. Beer is typically SOLD in half barrels, which has 15.5 gallons . It also is sold in 7.75 gallon or 1/4 barrel. As well as a 5 gallon or 1/6th barrel or sometimes called a torpedo keg.