Why should that matter?
I’m curious if other people refrigerate the bottles after the first pour. It seems to me that would help preserve the wine.
How does it work with wines that have a heavy amount of sediment?
I use mine frequently and have had it since it first came on the market. I would argue that the degradation is immediate, and relatively mild for younger wines. It appears to me that it is the result of of access and after the cork resealed there is no further change–so in my experience I don’t think the bottle continues to decline over time. After this the wines seem to be well preserved for months. Because of this I tend to try and limit access to once, maybe twice before popping the bottle.
The description of the subsequent bottles as being ‘flat’ and less vibrant with less aromatics seem consistent with my experience–but I still find the device valuable. I would summarize by saying I can sample any young wine with coravin and open it 6-12mos later and have it perform like a traditional bottle open 2 days any time I want.
Josh - I take it you’ve used it only for younger wines. Or have you tried it on older wines and don’t recommend it?
FYI, my wife ordered me a Pungo a week or so ago but was told they are waiting for the next production run – they’re out of stock.
Back when the Coravin first came out, I managed a restaurant wine list and started a program just like that. I think the longest we ever had wine from the first 3oz pour till it was empty, was about 3 months (a 1990 Aldo Conterno i think), and there was no degradation. I worked there with the Coravin for about 6 more months and never once had a wine go bad. The prices by the 3oz pour ranged from 15 to 50 bucks depending on the wine, and people went for it. I think it is appropriate for a guest to send back a glass if they taste any flaw of course.
I believe it to be important to continue to store the wine on its side once it’s been accessed, the cork could dry out faster once you coravin it.
Does anyone know if those Wine O Matic things are more reliable?
There a couple of restaurants in my area using Coravin, and a couple with Wine O Matic, and I’ve been skeptical of paying $25+ for high end tastes from either of them. Just don’t know how long those bottles have “open” for.
Little experience with the Coravin but an 18 mos Pungo user. Only in a few cases have I noticed degradation. Likely due to poor sealing corks. I’ve had wine pungo’d stoppered for 6 weeks and was still great. I usually leave the Pungo in but certainly use the pins with great success. Most of my wines have age (10-20yrs) so the corks are older and the wines often have sediment. I am either gentle with the bottle and pour a glass or pour two glasses into a small decanter at the beginning of the night. Neither is ideal but both IMO better than pulling the cork completely as I will not drink the entire bottle in a night.
Usually a Pungo’d bottle is done within two weeks.
I’ve actually done a few blind tastings like this, and the result has always shown that the coravined bottles ard weaker in comparison with those recently opened. Interesting to see how your tastings go.
I have been through three differnet coravin devices (had to send one back due to a production fault in the canister system (though it wouldn’t have affected the wine in any way)) and, although there have been exceptions (generally wines that would normally oxidise very slowly and/or have a high sulpher content) I have lost a lot of very good wine. After killing a top-condition bottle of Haut-Brion 1966 in 10 days I never use it on one of my better bottles. Generally I would aim to drink anything that I do use it for within two weeks.
As to restaurants and bars that use it, I’ve been to a few. As it’s usually not possible to do a comparative tasting it’s difficult to say conclusively but I do think a lot of the wines have been a little weaker than they would have been within a day or so of opening the bottles. As very few places use the device on wines of +25 yoa (no one with any experience with it would take that chance) you rarely get wines that have actually gone bad. However, unless I were blind tasting at a bar with a few friends (and in this situation a coravin bar is great) I’d always aim to avoid it.
John, I’ve tried all types. I found that the rate of leaking corks with wine older than say '95-'96 was too high. This is mostly bdx and the more brittle corks don’t always reseal, and older wine is generally more expensive, so losing half a bottle hurts. I also tend to believe based on experience that the degregation I’ve experienced isn’t due to oxygen but due to loss of volitile compounds into the headspace(well discussed on prior threads). This is consistent with my experience that the most aromatic wines (again mainly bdx) seem to be the ones where the later pours are not at the same. And I think it’s mainly the lack of complexity in the nose. The palate is generally still fresh but the wine not as enjoyable since the nose is more “flat”.
Younger wines tend to be more sturdy and less aromatic and these do very well with coravin. Also, corks are more spongy and only rarely fail to reseal. I would also add I changed to the smallest needle some time ago and I do think it helped significantly. If you think of wines that usually are still enjoyable on day 2 after popping the cork, these wines do fine with coravin. My experience with more fragile wines is much more mixed.
This thread has been useful. I picked up a secondhand Coravin a few months ago and have used it a few times – a couple successes and one failure. On the failure, I noticed a very slight hiss/air escaping upon the needle going through the cork for the first time. Is that normal? I always clear air out of the needle before inserting it and don’t know if there’s any correlation between the sound upon entry and failure rate (just don’t have a big enough sample), but wondering if anyone else hears this.
David, was the failure a second access or initial?
Everything was fine on the first use, but when I next accessed the wine (3 or 4 weeks later), it was shot.
My limited experience with Coravin:
First, on old wines, bad experience. The corks are simply too fragile already. (In this case old is pre-1970) If you have a fragile cork, then the pressure of the gas may also cause the wine to blow out the sides of the cork, which is definitely bad.
I had a WBG at a wine bar, and the wine had the same gassy smell/taste as I sometimes get from the automatic machines. Some people do not smell it, but I am very sensitive to that smell. I asked when it had been first coravined, and the person told me it had been over a month. Now this was off menu and I was tasting blind, so it was not too expensive, but still there was a noticeable difference.
In the few wines that I have coravined at home, I did not keep them for more than a couple weeks normally. And they were fine. For me, it is great to be able to open a couple wines with friends but just do tasting pours via Coravin. I can then go back and enjoy a glass of each over the coming weeks until it is time to open the bottle and finish it. Neither the vacuum pump nor the cans of Argon preserve the wine as well. But I wouldn’t hold the bottle for more than a couple of weeks (save for perhaps a sticky).
There might have been pressure behind the cork before you inserted the needle, and by inserting the needle allowed that pressure to equalize to an extent.
That sounds reasonable. Is there any reason to think that would contribute to a failure to preserve?
Are you referring to EnoMatic (or Wine Emotion, Napa Technologies) machines? I’ll assume so and say that I worked in a place that had an 8-bottle Wine Emotion unit they used for maybe 3 years until the place closed. It’s difficult to be certain about the sensitivity and/or experience levels of people who did BTG from it, and I know that the vast majority of people don’t seem to have the level of sensitivity you describe. I can say that I served hundreds and hundreds of glasses from that machine and had very few complaints.
That said, there are lots of variables in play here beyond the taster’s sensitivity.
-The major issue is that the bottles have to be opened to get them in all of these machines.
-When the WineEmotion units came out they claimed that they had improved on cross-contamination issues in the EnoMatic (both Italian, both had the same engineer I think), where gas could carry aromas and/or contamination between the wines. So there’s that.
-Some venues use Argon, some use Nitrogen. Some use food-grade of either, others don’t. That’s one more issue that could affect a super-taster.
-The manufacturers suggest very frequent and rigorous cleaning of the system. Not all venues do that.
-Where I worked we date-marked every bottle and began tasting after a few days. Not all venues do that.
Over the three years I had a small number of people tell me they could smell or taste(?) the Argon and others who just felt the wine had been ‘dulled’ by the gas. If the taster seemed to have previous valid experience with the exact wine, that seemed credible. Otherwise I found it difficult to know whether the issue was that or maybe bottle variation or something else. I do know that the science is that the gas mixes in with the wine in these situations, as it does with a Coravin. The lower the wine level, the more gas in the bottle, the greater the potential for contamination at some level.
So… the Coravin seemed to answer at least the ‘opening’ and cross-contamination issues, though the needle hole seems to be a possible ‘opening’ that’s been talked about. I used to sell a hand-held Argon bottle with a regulated delivery device. It was like the cans of gas some people use for preservation but it was 100% food-grade Argon and provided several hundred times as many uses. Coravin basically ended it’s life (though manufacturing problems later nailed the coffin shut). In a rather perverted way, it does make me feel a bit better to hear that Coravin is possibly not the nirvana it appeared to be, but the need is still there. I do believe, however, that this whole thing is a problem for only a very small percentage of wine consumers… but they’re the ones who post here, so the issue has a very different context on these boards.
Nah. I use my coravin all the time and it’s pretty common to hear that hissing/air being released. You probably just got unlucky with the cork on that one.
I love mine. Been using it since around release. Out of probably 100+ coravined wines, I’ve only noticed a few degradated bottles and it’s usually only after my third time accessing a bottle.
As for time. I’ve had a 2010 sordo Barolo last over a year after being coravined a few times over the year+
I always clean mine with hot water after use and store bottles on their side with a small amount of paper towel taped to the cork to check for seepage. I never see more than a small drop of wine on the paper towel.
Good to hear. Gives me hope it was a one-off!