Looking for tasting room wine preserving system recommendations

I am looking for recommendations for a commercial wine preserving and dispensing system to use in my tasting room. These sound like they would be beneficial for being able to offer a larger variety of wines to taste or offer glass pours from. Usually these are systems that preserve open bottles with an inert gas so you can open them and keep them fresh. I would like one that has built-in refrigeration and holds up to 8 bottles.

There are a lot of them out there and wondered if anyone has any experience with any of them…good or bad. Thanks in advance for the help. I am just doing some investigation at this point so would appreciate any feedback.

Contact Joe Padilla at Terravant winery in Buellton. He has 52 wines by the glass in this kind of system at Avant (the winery restaurant) and I’m sure he did a lot of research and could be helpful. joe@terravant.com - tell him Helen Falcone gave me your email.

I was at Clos Solene over the weekend and Guillaume was using the Coravin. From what we tasted it appeared to be doing a great job.

Hi Helen it sure was nice tadting your wines the other day.

I can’t recommend a specific system but the gas should be Argon. We bought a preservation system for our store that uses nitrogen and it sucks. Bottles we use with our Coravin last at least 2x as long.

Hi Andy - glad to meet you & Andrea and enjoy a few sips together.

Are you talking about a winery tasting room or a retail/wine tasting shop? I’d think a Coravin would work well at a winery, though some will just haul an Argon cylinder in and fit it with a regulator and hose.

If it’s a wine tasting/wine bar venue can we assume you’re familiar with Wine Emotion, Enomatic and Napa Technology? These would all seem to meet your criteria. I’m most familiar with Wine Emotion, but I think all three are good candidates if you’re looking for a self-serve type unit (run with a loadable cash card) or one that works as a dispensing unit behind a bar.

All three are extremely pricey compared with a Coravin, but serve a rather different purpose I think.

http://www.enomatic.com/default.asp?catIDPadre=41

I have the Dacor version of the Napa Technologies machine. I like it. It’s easy to clean; its easy to change cylinders. Service has been efficient. Cylinders hold 40 bottles worth of charge which might be too little in a commercial application but keeps me going for several months. There is a small learning curve, but overall it was definitely worth the (relatively high) price.

Thank you all for all the great advice. I have a small winery tasting room and want something fairly fool proof and easy for my staff to work with.

Right now I am looking at Coravin and Enomatic.

I am trying to figure out a way to make more wines available in my tasting room without having to pour so much down the drain after a few days if traffic is slow.

Try coravins with Vino Argo adapters. Restaurants and wine bars are starting to use their Coravins more because they have UHP Argon in bulk supply. There is even a system whereby you can operate many coravins at one time, from one source of UHP Argon, perfect for winery tasting rooms, I would think.

Judy - If a kegging system might work for you I would check out solutions that Micro Matic has. They have dialed in the kegging system including details in tubing which keeps air/oxygen from transferring across the tubing wall to the liquid. I have purchased items from them for keg transfers. All items are top quality and well engineered. Check with them on your application as I would guess they have clients doing the same… Wine on Tap Equipment: About Wine Systems, Kegerators, and more! …Cheers, Gary

Gary,
Thanks for the link, I will check it out. Much appreciated!

BTW I noticed your location, I am retired from Pfizer, now living the vineyard/winery dream in Washington State. I lived in Old Lyme for years. Check out my winery at Hard Row to Hoe Vineyards.
Cheers.

Judy

After many years of trying different “systems” in my tasting room(s)… we have settled on a simple, effective and very inexpensive system…

Half Bottles.

We have a few empty, clean half bottles at all times, and at the end of the tasting day we save in to those, as necessary, and either take home, or discard the remains. Works like a charm…

I know it sounds primitive, but after many years of trial and error (and don’t forget the staff changes and is often in a hurry to get home at the end of a day), it has been the best solution.

I ended up purchasing a used 4-bottle Enomatic and I am very happy with it. Although the half bottle idea is brilliant! Thanks.