Trend We Love: wine (and sake) served from a tap

There are several good reasons why a restaurant might serve wine on tap: it keeps house wines fresh (and bubblies bubbly), allows for economies of scale and greatly reduces the number of empty wine bottles to deal with at the end of the night. It’s also a cool gimmick that’s still novel enough to get new customers in the door. Here, six restaurants that serve wine (or sake!) using a draught system:

• Gusto 101 kicked off the trend when it opened last winter serving a house red on tap for a buck an once (the wine is actually made in the restaurant’s basement by Junction winemaker Vintage One).
• The Danforth’s Globe Bistro is the first restaurant to offer Contraband, an Ontario bubbly made from Featherstone Estate wine and produced specifically to be dispensed via a draught system (it sells for $8 a glass).
• At Rock Lobster, the Toronto Underground Market regular-turned physical restaurant, owner Matt Dean Petit pours a riesling and a cabernet franc from Vineland Estates for a dollar an ounce.
• Mark McEwan’s One, at the Hazelton Hotel, uses the same dispensing system as Rock Lobster to serve a pair of Vineland wines ($10 a glass) as well as well as a Spanish Verdello ($12) and a red from Washington State ($14).
• Queen Margherita Pizza’s just-opened Baby Point location serves Norman Hardie pinot noir, cabernet franc and chardonnay, as well as prosecco on tap ($1.60–$3 an ounce).
• Vancouver import Kingyo is the first restaurant in Ontario to serve Kozaemon sake on draught ($9.50 for 50 mL).