A lot of you have asked about the wine dispense system we have on the north side of our big workbench, behind the bar. Now that we seem to have it working pretty well, I thought I’d show it off a little.

Bobby at the wine tree

We call it a “wine tree” or our wine dispense system, but I think they’re usually called by a French word cuvinet or cruvinet, I’ve seen both. It’s a method of storing and dispensing wine out of bottles, that protects the wine from contact with air, instead filling the space in the bottle with an inert gas as the bottle empties.

We use very high tech labeling systems

The purpose of the wine tree for us is that we can offer a lot of wines by the glass, from inexpensive to rather high-end, and we don’t have to worry about the wine going bad before we sell the whole bottle. Since the wine doesn’t contact air, it stays in good condition for days (I’m told it will even stay good for weeks, though I don’t know that). Also, it’s set up to make it easier to store and serve the red wine at a felicitous temperature.

The system can dispense up to 16 wines or beers

Although they’re often used by wine bars I can’t think of any place in town that uses a temperature controlled wine dispense system for red wines. They are really expensive to buy, it turns out, and there’s no way we could have afforded to purchase one. Instead, ours was custom built for us by local draft system genius (and erstwhile Stone brewer) Lee Chase, along with Linkery people Michael and A.J.

At the same time, as part of our move & expansion we’ve been joined by Bobby O’Connor, who has assumed responsibility for our wine program. If you’ve been in in the last month or so you may have noticed how much more complete our wine list is, and how many great wines we now offer by the glass — that’s Bobby’s doing, for which we are stoked and grateful.