I took one bottle of 2007 HdB/HAG Volnay-Santenots 1er Cru (Faively) and used the Coravin on it on August 9. We removed just under 1/2 a bottle. It was the first use of the system. Then the bottle was marked and placed back in the cellar on its side until today (8/17 - 8 days later) when it and an otherwise identical bottle that was untouched were removed and both were bagged and stood up for about 1 hr.
The bottles were then uncorked and poured and tasted side by side - blind for my wife, though obviously I knew which was which. My wife has a really excellent palate, better than most people I know (save a few).
We both arrived at the same conclusion - the Coravin bottle has noticeably (in this context) less fruit and a bit of a hollow mid palate as a result, and both of us preferred the fresh bottle.
However, I’m not sure it would be very noticeable if the identical bottles were not side by side - the wine certainly didn’t taste oxidized. All in all, this test supports my original conclusion - I would use the Coravin to drink a bottle over 2 or 3 days and it works better than any preservation system I’ve ever tried. However, no way would I expect to use it for sampling a bottle that I want to cellar for even a moderately short term, and definitely not medium or long term. YMMV. Not claiming this was a perfect test, so fire away.
We certainly need a lot of experiments like this to get a sense for the impact. Thanks for posting.
Though I have Coravined a number of bottles since it arrived, tonight I popped the cork to revisit one of them (first cork popped on one of these bottles) - a 2001 Domaine Chevalier Blanc - after about 8 days it was still fresh and while all I had to go on was memory, there seemed to be little difference but for perhaps a tad less acidity. Was happy overall with the way it was preserved - if there was in fact less acidity showing, I am not sure why but it would mean a bit of change over that 8 days.
I have several bottles I’ll be popping the cork on in the near future. I have doubles of each and will do a blind tasting with some friends who are leery of the Coravin. I’ll be sure to post notes on what we determine. I’m looking forward to reading more scientific data on the capabilities of the Coravin. The only downside I see right now is I might have purchased a top notch short term bottle preservation system.
Good post, but I begin to realize how utterly hopeless this exercise is going to be. We will end up with a couple of thousand different but always completely subjective opinions as to whether the Coravin works or not! I am guessing that the Coravin people and its investors were counting upon just that, as well as all of the free publicity that they are getting on the wine boards. Truly, for Coravin, there may be no such thing as bad publicity. Laughing all the way to the bank and all that. The pricing is certainly based upon us buying the device and a bunch of radically overpriced argon cartridges and then throwing it in the bin with all of the other wine savers that we have bought over the years that either don’t work or are too big a pain in the ass to use…
I do not own a coravin (im in europe) and i am in doubt whether to buy one. I Agree with the OP that his method of testing is about as scientific as you can get with this sort of system, but there is one variable which is not accounted for: Inherent bottle variation. You dont know, whether these two bottles would even have tasted identical if they were popped and poured on the same time. I suppose that the best test subjects would be mass produced cheap wines, where you may expect all bottles from the same batch, stored at the same place for the same period of time etc. etc. to taste the same, and thus you can compare them side by side and see if you can detect oxidation, flabbyness or other faults which you can attribute to the Coravin system
I have no issue with someone who makes money filling a need in the market with a good product - and this seems like a good product. Is it overhyped? Yes, certainly - that RP would declare that a bottle tastes the same years after being tapped because his perfect taste memory says so is the kind of hubris that turned many of us off to him years ago and is an utterly ridiculous basis on which to use the device. That’s why I did this test - I’m not willing to accept the risk without doing a reasonable test. The more outlandish claims about not affecting the wine at all I now seriously doubt and would not take the risk.
As a short term system, I find a lot of value so more power to them for making a profit in the process - I don’t mind if I’m adding to the frenzy by posting something positive - I have no dog in this hunt.
Dave, there have been many allusions to the Parker Coravin videos, but relatively few people here seem to have actually seen them. Surely he did not say what you wrote above relative to validating Coravin years into the future based upon his shot palate? Top of the head or from the hip with no substantiation has been his style for a good long while now, but that, if true, would rather take the cake, even by Parker standards…
Bill, I just watched the first part of the video. “… RP would declare that a bottle tastes the same years after being tapped because his perfect taste memory …” is is not an entirely accurate representation of what he says in the video. What he does say is that wines “Coravined” 5 or more years ago, still taste fresh today. And he notes that a couple of them are wines which have oxidized overnight in his experience.
Are there in fact 5-year-old Coravined bottles? And was it clear that, if so, they were Parker’s, or did the Coravin people give the bottles to Parker and tell him that they had been Coravined? I am not interested in a Parker Coravin witch-hunt (too late for that), but just in understanding what the methodology actually was…
These were bottles Coravined by Mr. Coravin years ago. FWIW several of them had been tasted by RP in March, and the video was a 2nd tasting by him in June.
The Coravin is intriguing, but from a personal point of view, I don’t think I’d buy one because I’m afraid I’d end up with 50 bottles that are partially full (I know myself too well). I have enough troubles staying on top of things now, but adding partials to the mix seems like it would unnecessary complication. But I’m curious to hear people’s experiences as more and more folks experiment with them.
Dave,
Thanks for posting this. It is exactly the type of experience I am look to hear about, from someone I know and whose opinion I trust, not from a video from the company or RP.
Given what I have heard so far, I would not have the faith to leave a bottle Coravin’s for more than a few weeks, which is exactly what I get when I pop and bottle and gently re-fill a half bottle and re-cork.
I have had great experience with this method, and have found than often, pinot under 10 years old, show better on the 2nd half up to about a week, then start to get flabby.
I have found that syrah and CdP go longer and young ones seem to integrate, showing a look into their future.
I am still very skeptical about the long term effect the increased surface area Coravining will have on a wines aging.
If a wine can stay uneffected for more than a month or two, buying one will be a no brainer for me.
I look forward to reading the experiences from more of us Berserkers!
Hallo Dave…maybe one day we can taste these wines together (it’s been way too long).
My Coravin arrived yesterday and I plan on testing a few bottles over the next week or so and going back to them a few weeks later…then opening them with a new bottle (of the same wine and vintage obviously) late fall. This is certainly a neat toy that will change the way I drink wine.
A> 1 you remove half a bottle
B> 1 you remove 2 ozs
C> 1 you don’t touch
from the half bottle and 2 oz, you can check for bottle variation (between those 2 of course).
then you have someone blind test all 3… bottle variation is no longer a variable between A and B… plus you can see if pulling a little vs pulling a lot?
I don’t have one as i’m still not sure i need one but would love to hear results.
It’s hard for me to fault the subjectivity of any of these tests since I’m unaware of any objective tests in the wine world. Impressions are all we’ve got, aren’t they? So here’s another one. I’ve used the machine 5 or 6 times. I think I can safely say it’s the best (and far most expensive) preservation system I’ve used, and I’ve tried a lot of them, including the “open the bottle and then immediately pour it into 375 half-bottle and cork it to the fill line” method. The length of time between tastes has been from one day to a week. I think I’ve seen some fall off in quality, but not oxidation, and I hate the taste of oxidation.
This is how it has changed my drinking habits, so far. I am far more prone to open a Saxum, Booker or Beaucastel now because, in the past, I had absolute certainty that it would be a much different wine when I came back to it. This is very good for me because I am waaaay overloaded, proportionately, with elite wines.
There appears to be a real problem with how much wine emerges from a two second push of the release valve. This COULD indicate a number of things, including the possibilty that there is something else in there besides wine and argon. Because of the newness of the device and the scale of the problem it attempts to solve, I find this discussion fascinating.
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