Vancouver Urban Winery

Vancouver Urban Winery

Vancouver Urban Winery can be found two blocks off Gastown in Railtown, one of the most historically prominent towns in Vancouver. The urban winery is the first of its kind in Vancouver and with a space spanning 7,700 square feet; your Fraser Valley Wine Tour will never be the same again. Vancouver Urban Winery spoils you for choice with twenty wines available, all on tap.  While you may expect to walk into a traditional winery with all the equipment you would expect to find in a winery, the Vancouver Urban Winery does not actually curate their wine on the premises.  The establishment does however hold a winery license that only allows them to sell tasting glasses that are one ounce.

FreshTAP and Urban Winery

The unique element of the Vancouver Urban Winery is that all the wine available on tap is kegged on site by a firm that is changing the face of British Colombia wine. The firm is known as FreshTAP and it was created by entrepreneurs Steve Thorp and Mike Macquisten. As Canada’s only custom kegging business, FreshTAP pumps wine from pressurized tanks into stainless steel kegs that are almost 20 liters. The wine in the kegs must be kept under nitrogen to prevent it from oxidizing. Once the draft line is connected to the Vancouver Urban Winery, the wine can be drawn via a tap and it is pushed from the keg by a colorless and flavorless gas that also helps to preserve it for a few months.

Why Vancouver Urban Winery

The benefits of drinking your wine at the Vancouver Urban Winery are endless. Not only is the space trendy and cool for hanging out with family and friends, it also ensures that the wine you receive is as fresh as the day it was produced. Unlike bottled or corked wine that goes stale after a day, wine delivered to you by the FreshTap mechanism maintains its fragile flavors and intensity because the wine is transferred properly to your glass. Since the draft lines are maintained well and are clean, the product you receive in your glass is uncontaminated and vibrant.  

As an urban winery, the Vancouver Urban Winery also manufactures and distributes wine for various brands including the Roaring Twenties Wine Company. The winery is not associated with any vineyard, which allows it to source finished wine and grapes from various parts of the world. The FreshTap concept is still fairly new but if you want to experience the wine making experience fully, a visit to the Vancouver Urban Winery should do just fine.