TC winery taps a trend

LANSING -- Michigan is known as the home of many a favored microbrew -- and now wine on tap.

"When we make wine, we at the winery drink it out of the tap," said Bryan Ulbrich, owner of Left Foot Charley Winery in Traverse City. "It's very common in Europe. We wanted to see how people responded."

Ulbrich began serving wine straight from his tanks on Valentine's Day.

"It's been extremely popular," Ulbrich said. "People come and fill up a one-liter growler. It's a good amount of wine for two people over dinner."

Growlers, or handled jugs used for holding draft beer and wine, come in 750 milliliter and 1, 1.5 and 3-liter sizes. The most common beer growler, the 1.8 liter (half-gallon) beer growlers, is federally regulated.

Andrea Miller, a spokeswoman for the state Liquor Control Commission, said the state treats draft wine the same as other bottled alcoholic drinks.

"(It) is taxed the way we tax beer and bottled wine," she said. "As long as it's bottled in a federally approved container, it's treated the same as any bottle of wine made by a licensed winery."

Miller also said there are no additional licensing requirements for wine on tap.

At Left Foot Charley, wines are tapped from 1,000-liter tanks. It currently offers a pinot grigio, pinot blanc, riesling and a semi-dry blend called Murmur on tap.

Unlike beer kegs, wine tanks aren't nitrogen-pressurized. The tanks rely on gravity to be tapped.

Ulbrich said the company will keg and supply wines to a Lake Michigan sunset cruise line as a field experiment this summer.

"Right now, Left Foot Charley is too young and too small to keg wine for customers," he said. "It invokes quite a bit of infrastructure -- kegs, taps, nitrogen. It's hard to anticipate sales months from now."

Chris Moersch, general manager of Round Barn Winery, Distillery and Brewery in Baroda, said he first heard about tapping wines from Left Foot Charley and thinks it's a great idea.

"It makes a lot of sense," he said. "You can save on corks, glass and labels. It's the same reasons bars get kegs for beer."

In addition to saving money on supplies, Moersch said wine keeps better because of nitrogen regulation in the tanks.

Moersch said Round Barn offers seasonal wines such as sangria on tap, but sees draft wine as a viable way to more regularly serve customers.

Officials at the Michigan Grape and Wine Industry Council said Left Foot Charley is the first state winery to offer draft wine regularly.

Crick Haltom, co-owner of Lawton Ridge Winery in Kalamazoo, said he knows of local restaurants that serve wine from a hose, but Left Foot Charley is the only winery he knows that offers tap wine to customers.

For now, Left Foot Charley is the only guaranteed place to get Michigan wine on tap, but only through July. Ulbrich said he needs to see if it will remain in demand enough to serve year-round.

Joe Vaillancourt writes for Michigan State University's Capital News Service.