Wine

Sales of the Coravin wine accessing system, which we reported on back in February, have been voluntarily halted by the company due to safety concerns. The device, which pressurizes wine bottles so that they can be poured without exposing the bottle to oxygen, apparently does not play well with flawed bottles. As Eater.com reports, 7 bottles have apparently burst, with one of those incidents resulting in a laceration. The company will be temporarily stopping sales, and will be shipping neoprene sleeves to current and future customers that will contain the glass in the event of a rupture. As the company points out, the bottles do not burst so much as they fracture. As wine bottles are actually engineered to withstand pressures much greater than those induced by the Coravin System, the problem lies with bottles that are flawed or have been damaged prior to accessing. The company has updated its safety instructions to note that the neoprene sleeve should always be used when accessing wine with the system, and that the Coravin should not be used with "damaged, flawed, or non-standard bottles." According to Eater, sales will resume when the company has updated its infrastructure to include the neoprene sleeves with each purchase. Source: Eater.com, Coravin.com Previously, Feb 18, 2014: Have Your Wine & Save It Too Have you ever visited an upscale restaurant and wished you could sample that $500 bottle of wine? Or even just come home after a long day, wanting a glass but unwilling to commit to a bottle? Well a new device for that purpose is causing excitement in the wine world, and has big city sommeliers buzzing. The apparatus, called a Coravin, promises a new way to enjoy your wine, glass by glass, while leaving the bottle sealed and virtually untouched. The Coravin was designed by a New England medical entrepreneur and wine enthusiast, Greg Lambrecht. Over the course of nearly 15 years, he crafted the device so that he could enjoy his wine collection by the glass, sampling bottles over longer period of time. The Coravin is a small device, resembling a microscope, that utilizes a medical grade needle to pierce the wine cork. Once the cork has been pierced, argon gas is released from a canister in the device, into the bottle, which causes it to pressurize. Wine then flows through the needle out of a spout in the device. When the needle is removed, the (natural, not synthetic) cork's natural playability will cause it to re-seal itself. At the end of the process, you've extracted a glass of wine without letting oxygen into the interior of the bottle. Lambrecht prefers to refer to these bottles as "accessed", rather than opened, to avoid the connotation of spoiled wine. The Coravin claims to allow wine enthusiasts to enjoy a glass or two now, and the rest in a week, a month or even years, without degrading the wine or interrupting the aging process. The argon gas used to pressurize the bottle is inert, and does not interact with the wine. It is also heavier than air, so assuming the bottle is stored upright, any oxygen that does enter the bottle will be separated from the wine. Many upscale New York restaurants have begun serving glasses of rare and expensive wines that would otherwise be inaccessible to a larger audience. Establishments such as Del Posto and Nomad have glasses available via Coravin, and Craft & Clement in the Penninsula Hotel now has their entire wine list available by the glass. The Coravin costs $300 retail, and requires fairly frequent replacement of the argon gas canisters in order to function. This makes it a bit of a steep investment for casual wine drinkers. For enthusiasts with rare or expensive bottles, and indeed for restaurants and sommeliers, the device looks to be of great value. Does your restaurant or bar have a Coravin, or would you consider purchasing one for your wine program? Let us know what you think of the device via Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter.