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WI n EM ak I n G reusable) keg for the eastern markets. It's still green, he notes: "It saves the packaging and weight of 26 bottles." As of January, VinTap has 1,400 stainless steel kegs in play. Ouellette says that some wineries fill their own kegs, and others have him fill them at Ballentine Winery in St. Helena. "If we distribute the wine, we buy it and fill the keg. If we broker it, we don't buy the wine," he says. He uses a series of portable tanks to hold it, moving down as necessary and checking sulfur dioxide each month. He adds that he sells the wine very quickly. Ouellette says that wineries differ in their level of polish, and some filter the wine while others leave it unfiltered and unfined. Challenges with keg wine Peter Granoff, the managing partner of Oxbow Wine & Cheese Merchant in Napa's Oxbow Public Market, originally installed six draft lines—two dedicated to wine and four for beer. "Now, 2.5 years later, we have six beers on tap and no wine. The demand for a broader assortment of draft beer pushed out one wine line, then ultimately both. This would have been an issue if we didn't have a good assortment of wines on the bar from bottle, but that is obvi- ously not the case." While it was the success of beer rather than problems with keg wine that caused Granoff to change, he describes the chal- lenges in using keg wine. "The issues are finding producers who can properly tap off tanks to fill a keg and then deliver it in stable condition. We have also had some problems with tartrates accumulating in the line (the entire stretch is chilled from walk-in to bar tap), but our beer vendors are very good at cleaning those out and have been helpful. Being here in the val- ley and close to the producers has been enormously helpful. It would be a far more challenging endeavor at a distance," he adds. Fish Story, which opened in Napa in fall 2010, has about half a dozen wines on tap. John Hulihan, vice president of beverage and service, says he first looked at the concept of wine on tap when the Lark Creek Restaurant Group decided to reposition the Lark Creek Inn into the more casual Tavern at Lark Creek. "Some other restaurants had wine on tap, but the wines did not have a great Jordan Kivelstadt (above), director of produc- tion at Silvertap, cautions that kegs have to be cleaned and stored properly. Wines & Vines MARCH 2011 37