Why Keg Your Wine?

Great question! A kegging system is a bit of an investment, but the benefits are huuuuge! They are:

1. Less bottling. It isn't especially hard, but it's not the coolest task on the winemaking chore list, and it mainly involves a lot of washing and sanitizing and drippy filling--I'd rather put up a keg and get on with sharing it!
2. You don't have to open a whole bottle for only one glass. If you just need a cup of wine for cooking, you can take it, and the rest of the keg will stay fresh and ready-to-drink--for months!
3. You can take it anywhere! Parties, tailgating, picnics, the cottage, the beach, any place you want to share your wine. Best of all, you don't have to haul fragile glass bottles around or pack them out. It's light, portable, and fits right onto a standard refrigerator shelf.
4. You'll never search through that kitchen drawer for a corkscrew again!

Is Kegging An Alternative to Bottling, or An Extra Step?

It's an alternative, but with a twist: you can bottle directly from a keg! Simply wash and sanitize a wine bottle, fill from the faucet, a growler filler, or a bottle filler and cork.

Why would you fill a bottle when you've got wine on tap? When you want to send a friend home with some of your wine, but don't want to give away a whole keg!

Can You Age Wine In a Keg?

Yes! Wineries age wine in stainless steel tanks all of the time

However, because kegs have a very low OTR (Oxygen Transfer Rate), the wine doesn't experience micro-oxidation, which plays a role in part of the aging process. Fortunately, the winemaking process for Master Vintner kits introduces exactly the right amount of oxygen to the wine.

In any case, aging isn't just oxygen reactions: there are thousands of complex biochemical reactions that help wine mature over time, and they all work exactly as well in a keg as in a carboy or a bottle--or a stainless steel tank at a major winery.

So Oxidation Is Not a Thing?

Nope, your wine won't oxidize! Follow your kegging instructions and purge the keg before serving and there won't be any oxygen to affect the wine. And that goes for the whole keg--unlike a bottle where if you open it, you pretty much have to drink it that day, before it oxidizes, the keg will keep all of your wine ready to drink, no matter how much or how little you use.

Does Kegging Affect the Flavor?

Kegging won't change the flavor of the wine in any way. Kegs are made from high-grade stainless steel and the seals are all beverage-grade, and built to withstand acidic environments. As a storage system, kegs have been estimated to be 800 times more effective at preserving a wine's flavor than a bottle!

What About the Gas? Won't the Wine Get Fizzy Under Pressure?

The wine is pushed out of the keg by nitrogen gas, controlled through the regulator. Nitrogen is inert, meaning that it won't participate in chemical reactions, so it doesn't soak into the wine and make bubbles the carbon dioxide does. In addition, kegs uses very low pressure to push the wine--you could use higher pressure, but that would make it a wine firehose!

Is This New, or Have You Kegged Wine Before?

I've been kegging my wine since the 1990's. In fact, here is a picture of the back of my poor, overloaded little car that I took today. 

Poor little thing, doomed to life as a wine-wagon

Wine. It's all wine, made from  Winemaker's Reserve, and that's only half of it. The two big kegs are 10 gallons (38 litres) of Merlot and Chardonnay, the little ones are Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon. The tank of gas you see is nitrogen, with a special regulator--when you're kegging this much wine, you need a tiny bit more nitrogen to move things around. 

Looks like the parties at  Chaos Manor are going to be a lot of fun this year!