Who’s going to be the first!?!
I think someone has done this. They said it was very difficult to get the needle through the cork, and when they did the wine came out without bubbles. Maybe something about coming out through a tiny needle with a lot of surface area relative to the wine let go of the CO2?
The cork has to be easier to get through than the metal cap…
I’m sure someone, somewhere tried this. Probably a member here. I’d love to know what happened.
Yup. Broke a needle. The cork is much more dense as it is larger than standard corks and compressed into a similar size opening.
If your plan is to take off the cage and the metal cap and mess around with pushing the needle through, it would be best to keep your face out of the way and point towards a neutral and unoccupied corner.
-Al
I tried this back when I first got the gadget in 2013. Used pretty close to the procedure Al recommends above. Here’s my note from CT:
So I tried the Coravin on a bottle of Champagne, and lived to tell the story.
Removed the foil and cage, removed the metal cap, and replaced the cage.
Inserted the Coravin needle as with any still bottle. It took much more pressure to insert the needle. A very brief hiss of gas lasting a fraction of a second as the needle went in - presumably as it passed through the gas in the headspace… then… nothing. No wine came gushing out.
Tilted the bottle into pouring position, no wine came out.
Gave a quick burst of argon by briefly depressing the lever. Then out came about an ounce of foam followed by about 5 ounces of wine. Removed the Coravin needle. No leakage.
The wine that came out, however, was devoid of bubbles. Presumably the CO2 “de-gassed” from the wine as it came out.
What about the rest of the bottle? Was it depressurized?
I next removed the cork. Almost no “pop” at all - indicating that pressure inside the bottle was not much above atmospheric. But the remaining wine in the bottle still had a normal mousse when poured out.
So the Coravin appears to have reduced the pressure in the bottle to about atmospheric and removed the bulk of the dissolved CO2 from the wine that passed through the device, but without affecting the rest of the wine in the bottle. Not sure what the reduced pressure in the bottle might mean for the rest of the wine in the bottle if the cork had been left in.