David,
I believe your test. The only real way to prove that a wine has not deteriorated after opening it and “preserving” it is to compare it with a fresh bottle.
It’s hard to accept, but every one of us is subject to suggestion, and few of us can remember taste accurately–even if we are reading our notes.
I’m not sure how much i really need this thing or how often i’ll use it, but i had to have one to satisfy my gadgetphilia. Works like a charm. Second “pour” of a Bryant Cab a week after the first is indistinguishable, at least by memory. But…
(Warning, you may not want to try this at home)
I proudly demonstrate my shiny new toy for my wife, who says, “That’s really unappealing. The nice sound and look of the wine pouring into the glass is gone. It’s so slow, like an old guy having trouble peeing.”
Shrinkage, anyone?
I think your wife makes an excellent point. It’s the fundamental lack of humanity of the idea that I find so unappealing, whether or not it works as claimed. Bottles are made for opening and drinking, not for obsessing over in increasingly small amounts while the price goes ever skywards.
I completely agree with your premise and reach the exact opposite conclusion on the Coravin. I agree that bottles are made for opening and drinking, but currently I can’t open a bottle unless I have at least three nights in a row to finish it. If I can extend that window to a week or two with little to no drop-off, I can open and drink more wine. Doesn’t that make the Coravin a useful aid to drinking and enjoying wine? (Note: I have no intention of using the Coravin to sample an ounce or two of expensive wine and storing the rest of it for years… I have no confidence in a method to extract wine that has absolutely no effect on the remaining wine.) I haven’t tried the Coravin yet, but I’m hoping it will perform as advertised…
Ashish, if I were a Sauternes fanatic too I might take a different view! Although it seems to me that Sauternes usually keeps for a week refrigerated perfectly well.
David, thanks very much for posting. I hope we see more experiments like this one, and some with even longer time periods and multiple Coravin uses on the same bottle.
I agree that if this is just the best short-term preservation system on the market, there’s nothing wrong with that, but that isn’t how it’s being marketed from what I’ve seen. Personally, it’s more than I would want to spend on any short-term preservation system, but I can totally understand why some people would think differently.
I don’t know why anyone would want to taste their older wines in one-ounce drips over a thousand years, and like others have posted, the point of opening those older wines is to drink them–with others. Also, most younger wines do ok in the refrigerator for a few days. With those two thoughts, this latest preservation device goes into the area of my brain where all the previous preservation devices have been tossed.
I’ve reconciled to the fact that once the bottle is open (or the cork penetrated) no wine is the same on the second pour, certainly not the same a day or a year later, no matter what the preservation system promises.
If it absolutely works (a big if, I know), then a Coravinner could test all incoming bottles for being corked and immediately open and return the bad ones. ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
This is pretty much where I am at as well.
I don’t have a dog in the fight, and I don’t own a Coravin (but may consider it down the road at some point), but it seems to me that the hardcore anti-Coravin crowd here is left to spectacular hyperbole about the device.
I keep reading these statements about 1945 Haut Brion, people only serving a bit of their good wine to guests and hoarding the rest, tasting mature classic wines in 1 ounce pours over decades and expecting the wine to stay perfect, no longer sharing wines with friends and loved ones, and so forth, but I haven’t seen anyone who owns one doing those things or planning to do them.
Coravin is like most pieces of technology – it isn’t good or evil, it just depends on how someone uses it. If you buy a car so that you can go run people over, that doesn’t make cars bad. So far, all the examples I’m seeing from the actual users of the Coravin sound perfectly reasonable and harmless to me.
Chris:
I’m responding mostly to the press release that I received regarding the release of this item (and a few comments on the board). The press release touted all those things that you say no one has expressed on this board.
Speaking of this board, not directed at Chris, but why even after I click the box that says I want to be logged in automatically, am I forced to log in every time I come to the site and try to post?
I fortunately haven’t had that experience with WB (I wonder if using a different browser for this site might make a difference?), but sites that keep making me log in over and over again do fatigue me, and I find myself using them less and less over time. Hopefully, Todd or someone else can help you figure out what the problem is.