Probably by now most wine lovers have heard about the Coravin wine preservation system. I recently received one of their top systems as a gift and it has changed my wine world. Many quality restaurants use the Coravin to offer select high-end wines by the glass. The premium price for that glass will deter many from opting in so it might take a few days to some weeks to finish the bottle. Coravin draws wine through the cork with a surgical grade needle, replacing the wine with Argon gas, a noble inert gas not prone to chemical reactivity. Oxygen is a highly reactive gas combining with and altering the structure and flavor of most things. Oxidation starts to occur as soon as a bottle of wine is opened.
Initially, this early oxidation is your friend. Wines that have been cooped up in a bottle for some time need to open up. It”™s the oxygen that allows for this and it can be the olfactory equivalent of a flower expanding and blooming. Tight, constricted flavors will develop and open, revealing a three-dimensional flavor profile of fruits, herbs, spices and perhaps flowers and savory scents. But this oxidation improvement will not last. Within a few hours to a few days, chemical oxidation will hurt and eventually kill the wine. I used to open a full bottle and immediately pour off half the bottle into a 375-millimeter bottle and cork it tightly. And I also had the rubber cork system with slits for pumping some of the oxygen out of the bottle. The Coravin system has changed all that, enhancing the in-home wine-tasting experience.
People often ask me which is my favorite wine. I had a Domaine de RomaneÌe-Conti Pinot Noir from Burgundy once and, yes, it”™s still at the pinnacle of my many tasting experiences. But it is painfully cost prohibitive. I usually answer this question with “Depends on the time of day, depends on the time of year, and it depends on whether food is part of the experience or it”™s just the wine and some conversation.” I now have a wine rack in a corner of my kitchen stocked with red, white and RoseÌ wines to pour via Coravin to be able to taste whatever suits my environment and my mood. Right now I have a Pinot Noir, a Cabernet Sauvignon, a Merlot, a Cabernet Franc, a Nebbiolo, a Bobal and a Tempranillo for moods or foods of red wine. For whites, I have a Chardonnay, a Riesling, an Albariño, a Grüner Veltliner, a Sauvignon Blanc and a Viognier. And I have a bottle or two of RoseÌs. Of course, this newly assembled library of wines is regularly morphing.
With the Coravin extraction of the wine, the remaining wine in the bottle will stay identically fresh for weeks, months and even years. Greg Lambrecht imagined and then began making Coravin systems in 2011. He calls the Coravin system a “passport to (being) able to explore all these different regions and all these different grapes.” Greg has compared and taste-tested Coravin preserved wines with never opened bottles of the same lot and neither he nor several professional sommeliers could find any difference. And some of these wines had been preserved for years.
So my house has become a tasting exploration and learning experience for visitors. So many people have preset ideas of what”™s in the bottle. I love to dispel false notions of what we”™ll find. All Rieslings aren”™t sweet ”“ far from it. And Chardonnays aren”™t too oaky. Those are usually old reputations established in our heads from exposure to poorly made wines decades ago. I might pour a taste of something as a welcome. Then something else with a salad or first course. And something a bit loftier with the main meal and then something completely different for dessert. Wine-tasting pairings with multicourse meals are popular in restaurants now. With the Coravin wine preservation system this can easily be your home experience.
Write me at doug@dougpaulding.com.
