I’m betting this is more user error and a bad bottle. Seems to me that I generally just do a slight squeeze of up to one second. I think it was recommended at one to two seconds of pressure. Someone may be going over that in order to get their wine out faster. I’m ok with slow pours. Just a thought.
I’m still willing to buy the unused capsules at $4 each. Safety for other users being my main objective here.
a few points:
i have a trusty source saying that up until a month or so ago, total sales were about 30,000 units. assume 1/3 of those are people like me who bought one and fiddled a few times with it and then tossed it in a drawer. so 20k units in “circulation.” maybe 5k of those are restaurants or wine reps who are heavy users. point being, there are nowhere near millions of bottles “accessed” by coravin
irregular or handblown glass are no-nos? whats irregular these days? we can pick on SQN, but there are more wines every day coming out in goofy shapes, high end and low end. this seems like another liability trap. who decides whats irregular, and is a wine drinker now expected to be able to identify a handblown bottle?
there has to be more to this story. im not smart enough to speculate, but you dont just go running to the CPSC for no reason. And if you are cynical and assume its a CYA move, then what do they know that they are not telling us?
ive long assumed that the deleterious effects of the coravin would eventually come out and that aside from short term use (like a restaurant), that the novelty would wear off. add to this concern that now we have suggestions that the remaining wine after “accessing” a bottle is held under much higher than normal pressure. can some of the scientists here opine on what could occur to a wine held under high pressure for a long time?
Well, of Wikipedia says so. Your summary of events is not even close to the story.
Why is added pressurization even necessary for preservation? Isn’t the Ar or whatever they use heavier than air? Does the pressure help with seal integrity?
Except what are the damages? Seven people claim to have lost the remaining fraction of the wine in a bottle, and one of those seven claims to have gotten a cut on his hand from the glass? And how many of those seven have evidence of it?
Hey, everyone’s tolerance for risk is different and you make your own decisions, but this news wouldn’t even make me blink about using a Coravin (if I owned one, which I don’t). I’ve broken bottles and wine glasses a few times over the years even without a Coravin, and life goes on.
What this goes to show is that it’s almost impossible to account for ‘any and all conditions’. Bottom line - ‘faulty’ bottles exist, just as ‘faulty’ glasses do, ‘faulty corks’ do, etc. It’s just that in this case, the ‘cost’ of finding one with a Coravin is quite possibly an explosive endeavor.
I certainly wish Coravin luck with handling this . . .
And to those who blame the consumer, I believe you are waaaay off base. It seems to me that the general user of this device is a bit more wine savvy and would attempt to account for everything they can. That said, microscopic cracks in the bottle are certainly a possibility.
Cheers!
Obviously, Mark. There is no way they can be sure about the 1:78,000. I’m just showing how many Coravined bottles it, if accurate, translates into. It’s just an estimate. So 
to you!
Well, not necessarily. Some people use them a lot more than others. But, again, I don’t know how Coravin got the 1:78,000 figure.
Chris,
You’ve broken bottles and glasses - but in how many cases do you think these broke because the bottles were faulty of the glasses already had cracks in them, etc.?
One other point to be made here - and this is one that’s been beaten to a pulp for sure - is that the consumers here seem to be willing to ‘live with’ faulty products such as corked wines without returning them - but not everyone does.
Cheers!
If there are really 20k in use, to get to 500,000 Coravined bottles (as estimated in my post above) would mean the average user (user not just buyer, as you point out) would have to have Coravined 25 bottles. Is that excessive? I don’t know, some restos and wine reps may have much higher usage…so it doesn’t sound totally out of line.
I have once had the top portion of a bottle come off while I was using a corkscrew and once had the top half of a bottle simply slide off a few minutes after I set the bottle down on the floor. In both cases I assumed there were hairline fractures already existing.
Seems likely, though of course not certain, to be a similar circumstance here.
Yep, what about the gas pressure cork remover? How is that different? I’ve used that a number of times.
That is a really good point.
Added pressurization isn’t really necessary, it’s a byproduct of the pressurized cartridge being used. And it doesn’t matter what gas you use (“heavier than air” is really a misnomer, anyway), you just want to replace the liquid being removed with the same volume of gas - in this case, an inert gas, instead of air.
The principle is exactly the same as injecting air with a syringe before withdrawing liquid from a medicine vial.
Right. But have you used one 78,000 times?
Another good reason to stick to volumetric flasks to preserve wine.
I get that this was tongue in cheek, but they have been on the market for years- I have to imagine that defective bottles would suffer the same fate.
FWIW, I don’t feel like I have used it that much, but when I looked at the actual data, I have CV’ed 39 bottles.
Well, I’m not a scientist, but some of the argon would diffuse into the water, it is very soluble (a little more than twice as soluble as oxygen) but very un-reactive.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say no, the increased pressure would not affect other reactions in the wine, not at that slightly elevated pressure of an inert gas.
Good point. Must have happened by now. Of course, I’d assume the failure rate is lower, since the pressure is only applied long enough to help get the cork out. It would also depend on how much pressure vs the Coravin.