If you want a wine to remain ‘as is’ after opening, I think you will be disappointed with any system. Even a small amount of oxidation will lead to changes. Even a small amount of headspace may lead to changes. But above all, WE are imperfect and will note things differently from day to day even if literally nothing has changed.
Just my $.02 . . .
Cheers!
I agree. But I think it is the least-bad of the wine preservation techniques I’ve tried, so it still has some value.
100%! An absolute must. Otherwise you’re going to have a bad time.
Found this blind taste test with 30 Somms done in Dec 2018 on wines Coravin-ed 3.5 years earlier:
Hosted by chairman and founder of Coravin, Greg Lambrecht, the test involved 30 sommeliers, two different wines, and eight glasses, and was designed to see whether Coravin, which uses a hollow needle to draw wine from a bottle without removing the cork, would damage a wine.
The tasting, which was blind, included a white and a red, and in each case, there were wines that had been accessed by Coravin on June 22, 2015 down to half a bottle, and those from the same case that had not been touched until that day.
The sommeliers were then asked to mark whether they thought the wines had been accessed by Coravin or not, as well as to identify the white and the red.
Lambrecht stressed that this was Coravin’s first “double-blind” tasting, because he normally tells the tasters what they are sampling, but not which wine has been previously accessed.
Due to the four-glass format for each wine, Lambrecht told the attendees that between one and three glasses could have been poured from the accessed bottles, while the random chance to guess the glasses correctly was 1 in 14.
After the tasting was over, Lambrecht asked for a show of hands from the sommeliers to see which glasses they believed were filled with wine that had been accessed 3.5 years ago.
While five correctly identified the white wines that had been previously accessed – glasses two and three – not a single attendee spotted all the reds, which were glasses 1, 2 and 4.
Before this, Lambrecht asked the somms to raise their hands if they thought that any of the glasses were oxidised, or not in a suitable condition for serving, and there were none.
For Lambrecht, this was the “most important result”.
The wines in the tasting were Kuhling Gillot Riesling, Nierstein Pettenthal, Grosse Gewächs 2009 from Rheinhessen and Hirsch Pinot Noir, San Andreas Vineyard, 2012 from Sonoma County. 10 of the attendees correctly identified the white wine as a Riesling from Germany while only one thought that the red was a Pinot Noir from California, with as many as 19 believing it was a Burgundy.
Lambrecht later told db, who took part in the experiment, that Coravin has now done similar tests with over 600 wine professionals from around the world employing 1200 sets of wine, including those previously accessed by Coravin between 3 months and 4 years prior to sampling.
In total, he said that such tests have been done on more than 60 different wines. He reported that the correct guess rate was a little less than 1/12 overall.
After the tasting was over, db asked one of the sommeliers who managed to correctly guess the white wines that had previously been accessed by Coravin, and they said the difference was barely perceptible, but concerned the amount of dissolved Carbon Dioxide in the wine, commenting that the CO2 was not evident in the wine that had been accessed by the tool.
On the other hand, the sommelier said that they couldn’t spot the difference between the reds.
The tasting was conducted in Montreal on 24 November, one day before the Somm360 congress started, which was a three-day event designed to help sommeliers obtain various qualifications and improve their standards.
I’ve had great luck w/ Coravin … I purge the needle before insertion, I don’t leave the needle in that long (not because of any specific direction but IMO just stands to reason that the cork will “snap back” both better and faster if the needle is out as quickly as possible) and I always use the smaller diameter needles. I’m not a restaurant and speed of service doesn’t matter to me when the difference is like 15 seconds vs 10 seconds. Vintage needle (cheaper) or gold needle (more expensive) are the smaller diameter needles that make the smallest hole in the cork.
Hasn’t someone in the past had a Berserker Day deal?
Yes. This.
If it is a wine I care about, then I drink it within the week. Otherwise I might let it go 4-6 weeks max.
I don’t own a Coravin and have no dog in this fight, but that evidence is pretty persuasive, especially because it is blind tasting, rather than the perception of someone who drinks a wine already knowing it had been Coravined a month ago or whatever. That knowledge likely plays a significant role in the taster’s perception.
Have any of you tried blind comparisons of a Coravined bottle versus a newly opened bottle of the same wine? It would be even better still if the taster didn’t know that was the difference, so he wouldn’t be searching or guessing, but just giving his impression of the two glasses of wine.
I rarely find that wines that have been Coravined are oxidized, but I think they are clearly different. Sometimes I don’t mind slightly different, but sometimes it’s worse even if not flawed.
The marketing for the Coravin is that is preserves the wine as if you had never tried it. I find that’s false. If the marketing was that the wine wouldn’t be oxidized when you open it, then that is true.
30 Sommeliers in a blind tasting would disagree with you 
Always wonder how much our preconceptions affect our opinion
30 Sommeliers invited to a tasting put on by the creator of the Coravin.
I trust that article posted earlier in the thread. Seems like they really looked at this objectively and not with anecdotes.
Oh, and I say this as someone who uses this product regularly and just had a stellar interaction with their customer service team who replaced my unit for free due to a manufacturing defect out of warranty.
Any recs on which model to own?
As far as I can tell, they all work basically the same. I think a “manual” model as opposed to an automatic (which automatically injects argon by just tipping the bottle) is better as it allows you to clear the needle just before insertion manually.
The more relevant consideration is which needle to use.
And…?
The point is that the same needle options are available on all models. The cheapest model with a thin needle will do better at long term preservation than the most expensive model with the thickest needle.
I would not personally use the “fast pour” needle on any wine that wasn’t going to be consumed over a few days (a high volume bottle in a “by the glass” program, maybe where speed does matter and wasted time adds up). The other needles just simply don’t pour THAT slowly (and let’s face it, if you’re accessing 3-4 glasses, you’re probably pulling the cork) where for home use that makes any sense to me.
I use the “premium” needle as it claims the same diameter as the vintage needle but the same pour speed as the standard needle. Instead of a hole at the bottom like other needles, it has a mesh along the “body” of the needle, which I suppose allows for more flow than the vintage needle. I haven’t put calipers on it, but the pour speed is definitely substantially similar to the standard needle.
What kind of idiot purports to conduct a valid blind test when gathering the results in a show of hands by the participants?
My tricks for using the Coravin (an original model) are to purge the needle before inserting, and to ensure the hole is sealed afterwards by dripping candle wax on it.
To me, the length of time you leave the needle in seems both relevant and under-analyzed. Of course the trade-off is, if you want more than one glass over the course of an evening, which is better: leaving the needle in for an hour or more, or punching multiple holes in the cork? No idea.
While I have had excellent experiences with wine that were coravined months earlier, there is no doubt in my mind that the cork doesn’t immediately reseal. Virtually every wine I’ve re-stored lying down has had some modest leakage of a drop or two. So I also assume there might also be some oxygen transfer.
very cool info, I rarely use my Corvine. I get nervous on more expensive bottles and cheaper bottles I just seem to drink in a day or two. Might be tempted to try using it on some nicer bottles soon.