by Gabe Jackson and Jane Jackson
For most wines produced, bottling is the final task. It is generally regarded as a laborious and expensive procedure---a kind of necessary evil---that literally seals the fate of the wine, for better or for worse. But it is not the only option! Kegging your wine is a viable alternative that can help you produce the freshest, best tasting, and most sustainable wine possible.
Introducing kegs and inert gases (required for keg pressure) into a winemaking program has a great many advantages in comparison to bottling. Let’s consider a few of them.
Stainless steel kegs are re-used year after year with zero waste ending up at the land fill. While it is possible to recycle glass bottles, most of them end up in the landfill.
Cork and bottle prices keep going up and they must be purchased again and again for each batch. Money spent on a keg system and kegs is a capital investment and occurs just once. The savings increases with each batch.
Kegs can be used to replace both carboys and bottles
That’s right---a TWO-fer! The most common keg size used at home is 5 gallons, same as the most common carboy size.
For some, this will be the best part. Filling a single 5 gallon keg is unquestionably easier and faster than filling and corking 25 wine bottles.
A keg system uses inert gases to protect the wine from oxygen exposure. This is a huge quality advantage, allowing oxygen pickup to be significantly reduced during racking, storage, and serving.
Less free SO2 is lost during storage
Due to the decrease in oxygen exposure, free SO2 levels will remain more stable and require less total additions over the life of the wine.
You can make adjustments after kegging
Sometimes a wine is bottled with a sensory flaw or balance issue that is actually fix-able, yet it can no longer be fixed only because it is sealed into innumerable bottles. In contrast, a keg of wine can be opened up at any time for a treatment.
Easier to store than bottles
Bottles and cardboard boxes take up a lot more space than kegs. A comparable volume of wine stored in kegs will fit into a smaller space that can be temperature controlled more easily and at less expense.
There is no concern about wine left over at the end of the night. It will be safe inside the keg.
You can bottle straight from the keg whenever you want
Want to take a bottle of wine to a dinner party? No problem. You can bottle straight from the keg on a moment’s notice.
You can easily produce sparkling wine
If you choose carbon dioxide (CO2) as the gas for you keg system, the wine will carbonate and you can have a sparkling wine on tap in just a few days.
No chance of cork taint, or cork breakage
A commonly cited statistic reports that 2-3% of corked wine bottles will suffer cork taint from TCA. Kegged wine will suffer 0% cork taint.
