Just man up and drink the bottle (channeling GaryC328i)
Thanks for all the feedback, which appears largely positive. Busted mine out tonight, guess we’ll see how it goes.
Nope, because I bought a floor recorker and spare corks specifically for Siduri/Loring Pinots. Unscrew, recork immediately (like within 5 seconds), then Coravin away.
Coravin has been a total game-changer for me. Had a few early failures but then learned to cover the top of a Coravin’d wine with a big glob of poster putty to protect any potentially compromised cork against oxygen, and all has been perfect. Still have not and will not experiment with long-term aging of Coravin’d wines, the chemistry will change for subtle reasons that have been touched upon (dispersion of aromatics into increased headspace, less amount of wine but same or greater amount of oxygen ingress, etc.)
It made me a taster of fine wine in a very intellectual way … You will get addicted to yours… ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
Nick, do you just cover the entire foil top with the putty, or did you remove the foil and place putty directly on the cork? Opened a 2007 Hall Napa Cabernet to experiment with.
Do you then remove the putty every time before you CV? Do you reuse the putty?
I remove the capsules of every wine I CV for easy ID. I haven’t started using the poster putty but think it’s a good idea.
Just on the foil (if the wine has foil, otherwise on the cork). I use a giant piece of the stuff to cover the entire top, and re-use it. I have no idea how much it mitigates oxygen transfer, but it’s enough for my usage. (Any resident chemists want to speculate?)
No
Very interesting, have to look into this. Thanks.
Why not? I would love to know
I might be in the minority here, but I don’t think I’d buy one again.
I enjoy it when I use it, but I use it pretty sparingly.
My biggest issue is that I mainly drink older bottles, and I have noticed that the Coravin just isn’t designed for that.
For younger wines, it’s great.
But for anything over 20 years, it doesn’t seem to work that well.
All in all, it’s a nice problem to have.
How so, condition of the cork, oxidation, sediment?
Because I have not bought one before, hence I can’t buy again.
I am philosophically against the device, I think it is evil for the old wine and auction market and I also think it takes away the spirit of sharing great bottles.
I would probably buy again, but:
It is not 100%, it has failed on bottles, wine has become oxidized.
It is terribly inelegant to pour wine through this device, takes away from the experience.
It opens up special bottles for everyday drinking, which is good and bad. The bad is that you can’t properly prepare the wine (in terms of decant or slow ox), so you aren’t really drinking at peak. Further, if everyday is special, no day is special.
Cost of cartridges is high, but there is a solution to this as I have highlighted in other posts.
David Gibbs, could I trouble you to elaborate? I drink primarily wines over 20 years old as well, and I haven’t had any trouble or mishaps with them using the Coravin. (The one bottle that did go wrong, after 5 separate punctures and vertical storage at room temperature, was younger.)
This is why I don’t own one. I look forward to sharing my favorite wines with great friends, I don’t need another excuse to drink wine by myself.
Hey Dan- I’ve found that with older bottles, the cork has lost some of it’s elasticity and just doesn’t seal itself up
as tightly as I’d like.
The argon escapes, and air comes in.
Also, for considerably older bottles, if the cork is saturated (or nearly so), the additional pressure causes them to move and lose seal as well.
I’ve CV’d a number of older bottles, and while some have held, most of them became oxidized after a week or two.
And if I’m going to consume them within that time frame, I’ll most likely decant into a clean .375ml, shoot some argon, and reseal with a cork/stopper.
Not nearly as convenient, but I’ve done it for years with quite a bit of success.
All of the above.
The gas, even at a low pressure, stirs up the sediment quite a bit.
And corks, especially saturated, don’t reseal properly.
I’ve had more misses than hits with bottles over 20, 30 years old.