Nordvest Stories: Beyond the Bottle — Nikolaj Siefert and the Future of Wine on Tap

We meet on a quiet weekday afternoon at the end of January at Siefert Vine’s office and warehouse — a space tucked away in a corner of Nordvest, on Birkedommevej. The area perfectly mirrors the blend of industry and creativity defining the area today. Walking in, you’re greeted right away by desks. It’s a small office space, where everyone already looks like they are family. Little did I know, it is actually a family business.

It’s a family constellation here: the office next door houses both Phone Alone (a venture producing privacy phone booths run by the family) and the wine business. The setup feels practical, fast-paced, unpretentious, and deeply focused on the logistics of how things actually work. The best part of the office? A full room to show off the original and latest products of the company complete with a high top table to have drinks at.

The Past

When I ask Nikolaj Siefert how Siefert Vine came to life back in 2016, the story has a delightfully unexpected beginning in sales in the premium tobacco industry.

Before going full-time into wine, Nikolaj was living a different life, traveling across Europe selling premium, handmade cigars. The pivot to wine came entirely out of the blue on a random Sunday in Poland.

"My father just saw a wine-on-tap system on a Sunday in Poland and it was like... what is this? Is this ingenious?" the founder laughs. "He kind of called me, and he also called my brother at a restaurant at that time, and said, 'you call all your restaurant buddies right now and ask if they know about wine on tap. And then call me back the next day.'"

The next day, the brother called him back with the answer: nobody in Denmark had ever heard of it.

They decided to test the concept, starting out with a small office in the city and a tiny, eight-square-meter storage room in Glostrup. The early days were a classic, messy trial by fire.

"When we got our first pallet, I knew absolutely nothing about the installation," the founder admits. "In that basement, I was trying to figure it out, I had wine all over myself." The room was so cramped that they couldn't even push an entire pallet inside by hand. Instead, they had to carry the kegs in one by one. "Initially, we bought one pallet at a time, and I was delivering the kegs in my mother's car in Copenhagen."

For those unfamiliar with the back-end mechanics, the wine doesn’t travel from a bottle into a keg: doing so would ruin the product and cost a fortune. Instead, they partner directly with independent producers across Europe to keg the wine right at the vineyards, or they import it in kegs directly.

The Present

Today, that tiny eight-square-meter room is history. Siefert Vine has scaled up significantly, occupying a small warehouse and office space on the ground floor of a building they’ve called home since 2019.

The building’s own history is its own reflection of how fast Nordvest is evolving. "I remember we had a little office upstairs before we came down," the founder recalls. "This ground floor before was a taxi driver cafe”. He adds “People were sitting playing the slot machine, smoking inside. When they cleaned it all out for the building site, the rats”.

Now completely upgraded into a clean, modern creative hub, the space serves as the launching pad for a concept that is steadily winning over Copenhagen traditionalists. For restaurants and bars, the shift from bottles to kegs is a game of pure optimization. "When you open a bottle of wine, the next day or the day after, it’s not good anymore because it oxidizes," the founder explains. Within their closed system, the liquid is completely sealed. No oxygen gets in, and no liquid gets out, keeping the wine perfectly preserved. Sustainability-wise, it also wins: By cutting out the heavy, awkward footprint of traditional glass bottles, the transport efficiency skyrockets. "We import 43% more wine per pallet compared to conventional wine bottles. That's an insane lot more."

While high-quality wine remains the core of their business, ranging from a classic Burgundy Chablis to trendy natural and orange wines, their present lineup has expanded heavily into cocktails and spirits on tap. They pour me a sample of their wine-based Bellini Spritz, which hits the palate with a crisp, light peach iced tea flavor. "I love it, my colleague Lucas loves it. We do a lot of tastings before agreeing on a recipe and taking in a new product," the founder smiles. "Of course, I mean, it always has its benefits” he smiles, “but it's also tough business."

Though they operate primarily in the B2B space supplying major local venues like Vega or Urban Camper, they’ve also woven themselves directly into the neighborhood's B2C fabric. They recently partnered with the team from Urban Camper to run a collaborative bar at Nørrebro Street Food, and they supply local spots where guests arrive to fill up reusable takeaway bottles directly from the taps.

The Future

Look ahead at the next six months to a year, and the goals for Siefert Vine are rooted in education, industry support, and cementing the category they helped pioneer.

They aren't looking to aggressively expand or constantly shift their wine list. Instead, they value consistency, maintaining deep, multi-year relationships with their producers in Italy, France, Germany, and Austria. The real future goal is about spreading awareness to a hospitality industry that is still finding its footing.

"What I really want to do is raise more awareness about this category, as it really helps out our customers out there," the founder explains. "From a financial point of view, but also in terms of quality and freshness of the wine that the guests get at the restaurant. A lot of restaurants are still struggling after COVID because they had to pay off a lot. Your turnover goes to zero from one day to another."

As the category grows, competitors are naturally entering the market, but the founder sees it as a rising tide that lifts all boats. He compares the shift to the early days of screw-cap bottles.

"You see the screw-cap bottle, initially people watched it and went, 'What the fuck is that?' But now you've got Michelin-starred restaurants who serve that. This is just the next step, evolving with the time," he says. "More competition is good because it proves there is an increased demand and the level of acceptance is growing. The cake just gets bigger, it just has to be about being the best at capturing the largest part of the pie."

Before we part ways, I notice behind us many high-end Bordeaux bottles lining the office shelf. It turns out to be Nikolaj’s father’s old collection, gathered during road trips through France decades ago. His father kept one of each and will never open them. "We consider it art, and art also has to provoke feelings," the founder notes, looking up at the shelf.

It’s a beautiful contrast to the bustling business just a few meters away. On the shelves sits wine treated as static art, never to be touched. But flowing through the taps below? That’s an honest agricultural product, meant to be pushed aggressively, served perfectly fresh, and shared across tables all over the city.

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