QUAFFER TAPS: THE DIVINO WINE SYSTEM AT AFFORDABLE GRANITE

This Spring, Affordable Granite has teamed up with a MAJOR supplier to bring you a breakthrough in tap design:the Quaffer tap.

We have become used to the growth of the market for more and more versatile kitchen taps. Ever since Dutch physicist Henri Peteri came up with the idea for a boiling water tap back in 1970, the firm he founded with his son, Niels, has been at the forefront of inovation in all things tap. You may not have heard of Peteri BV – but you have heard of the brand name Quooker.

Starting with a standalone boiling water tap, the technology has moved forward faster and faster. Boiling and standard Mixer taps came into the market around 2010. Filtered water and sparkling water have been added – the latter coming on line as recently as 2019, with the development of the Quooker Cube.

Covid and lockdowns, with many people forced to live and work at home for far longer periods, saw these developments really being valued in the home. The pandemic did no lasting harm to the highend tap sector! Having chilled, sparkling water on tap as you head into that heavy Zoom meeting is a big plus!

At Affordable Granite, all of this hasn’t passed us by. We have seen the growth in the taps market and we have sold many of these products. Now we have collaborated with a MAJOR player in the market to create the next big thing: wine on tap, in your kitchen! The Divino Wine System® was created, the  Quaffer® tap was born and is now available exclusively from Affordable Granite, the Granite and Quartz Worktops people!

The image at right here shows our classic Quaffer Victoriana Bridge Tap in gunmetal finish.

To the uninitiated it looks just like any other retro tap. But if we look under the sink we can see the Divino® technology which makes wine on tap possible.

At the back of the cupboard you can make out the boiling water tank. This feeds via the left hand lever to add the boiling water option to what is already a standard mixer tap.

The right hand tap lever controls the wine options. Two 6 litre wine tanks can be seen – for red and white. In this case we have a really interesting Portuguese red (almost black) based on the Alicante Bouschet grape and a Rioja Blanco. Spanish, of course!.

To the left can be seen a bottle of nitrogen gas. This is at the heart of the Divino Wine System ® – a controlled atmosphere of pure nitogen above the wine in the tanks rules out any loss of freshness and quality due to oxidation. Every glass is delivered consistently.

Of course, when it comes to drinking the wine, especially the reds, aeration is actually very important, to bring out all the more subtle flavours. The standard aerator in the nozzle of the tap sees to that! A glass of red from a Quaffer® tap is ready to drink after breathing at room temperature for only a minute or two.

The holy grail of wine delivery systems is, of course, sparkling wine.

The big challenge facing the technologists in the Major Sink and Tap Supplier has been how to deliver a consistent glass of Champagne, Prosecco, Cava or even an Asti Spumante. Holding the wine in 6 litre tanks under Nitrogen is a no-no – the fizz in sparkling wine comes from Carbon Dioxide, not Nitrogen, and mixing the gases led to the sparkle falling off badly as the wine was consumed.

Early attempts to use only Carbon Dioxide as the “filler” gas in the emptying tanks also hit problems. It was easy to get too much of tyhe gas dissolved in the wine, which lost the distinctly different feel to the sparkle and fizz that each wine type has.

At present, we have a half-way house solution: using a mix of Nitrogen and Carbon Dioxide, the wine is preserved and delivered reasonably consistently, but we have found that we have to limit the wine tank size to only 2 litres.

But then, let’s face it – sparkling wine really ought to be a BIT special!

Temperature is all important with correct wine delivery. The Divino System has the technology!

Quaffer taps feature boiling and chilled water options, as well as wine, of course. By running heat-exchanger coils through the Boiling water pre-heater and the chiller, the Divino Wine Delivery System technologists have been able to ensure that each glass is served at the ideal temperature.

This is accurate to within a few tenths of a degree. On installing each 6 litre wine tank, the perfect serving temperature for that wine type can be dialled in via the master control panel, guaranteeing a perfect glass every time.

A bit of lateral thinking – and the Quaffer Bathroom Range was born!

We are kitchen people. We think, live and breathe kitchens – specifically kitchen worktops, and granite and quartz worktops at that. But when it came to thinking up uses and contexts for our Quaffer taps, suddenly we got very lateral indeed! Women in our sales and office teams were insistent that we applied the Divino Wine Delivery System to the bathroom as soon as possible – so that is exactly what we did.

Picture to right: The Quaffer Westminster Standard bath tap (faux gilt finish) delivering the unusual Moschofilero & Roditis, bringing its distinct minerality and citrus notes to a bathtub near you.

Quaffer Corbusier Standard Tap, loaded with a very drinkable Californian Cab Sauv. Yes please!

At Affordable Granite we are People People – and we like Happy Customers!

What makes us tick as a firm is customer satisfaction – and few innovations have led to so many happy customers as wine on tap. Quaffer® taps and the Divino® Wine Delivery System have already put a smile on literally thousands of faces. And we like that.

That’s why each spring we set about trying to write an article like this. If you are interested in receiving further information about Quaffer taps or the Divino Wine Delivery System, please be sure to fill in our Contact Form before midday on 1st April!

If you are interested in other special projects we have done at this time of year, then you could check out…

The Affordable Granite Volcano, Smart Granite Worktops, AG Drone Deliveries, Hello! Granite Worktops

Heidi only drinks white. Thanks to Quaffer® taps she has a very fine Chablis and a straightforward Prosecco permanently available in her Dorking retirement flat

Olga has both red and white wines available from the Quaffer Regency tap in her Lewisham kitchen

Gordon and Mildred love to ring the changes via the Divino Wine System installed in their Brockham, Surrey, bungalow