By The Barrel

You can’t put new wine in old bottles, but you can put good wine in kegs – and casks, and pouches – and still not compromise on taste, writes MAX ALLEN.

- Max Allen

The glass of gamay I’m drinking is delicious. It was produced by Andrew Nielsen, an Australian winemaker who works in Burgundy and sells wine under the highly regarded Le Grappin label. It’s full of lips macking purple fruit, perfect with the succulent lamb on my plate here at Clipstone, one of London’s best new bistros. It’s a very classy drink. And it only cost me five quid a glass because it was poured on tap, from a keg.

Nielsen is one of a growing number of winemakers servicing the restaurant trade in the UK and around the world with kegs, as more and more establishments install systems for pouring wine on tap. Nielsen also sells 1.5-litre plastic pouches (with a tap) of Beaujolais, Burgundy and Côtes du Rhône called Bagnums: upmarket modern iterations of the goon sack, aimed at picnickers and budget-conscious drinkers who don’t want to sacrifice quality for cost.

Wine on tap is nothing new, of course. Neither is the concept of selling wine in a collapsible bladder: the bag-in-box is an Australian innovation that dates back to the 1960s. The difference is that the quality in the 21st century is much better than it was in the 20th.