Exploding bottles. Flying shards of glass. Razor-sharp, splinters everywhere. Scenes from a horror flick? Or an Italian restaurant?
A number of media outlets had their fun earlier this year with these disturbing images, when it was reported that the wine preservation device, Coravin, caused bottles to fail tableside. Descriptions like the ones above are just a tad overblown and grossly misleading.
The ingeniously designed and staggeringly popular gadget pierces a wine bottle’s cork with a thin needle and displaces the wine with neutral argon gas. This allows the user to pour wine from the bottle without introducing the wine to the harmful effects of oxygen. Restaurants can now sample and sell wines they would not otherwise pull the cork on.
“Coravin is the most transformational and exciting new product for wine lovers that has been developed/invented in the last 30-plus years,” say Robert M. Parker Jr. wine writer and critic in a testimonial for the company. “This is a killer device. It is going to revolutionize drinking wine and being able to access multiple wines in your cellar and have the choice of as many as you want.”
I don’t always agree with Parker, but he’s right this time. I’ve been using the Coravin in my dining room for 10 months with great success. I’ve been able to pour 11-year old Australian grenaches and other wines off the beaten path—wines that I knew guests would love, if I could only get them to try a splash of it. I’ve also poured glasses of rare Burgundies for wine lovers who wanted something a little better than my by-the-glass offerings.
But what about those exploding bottles? That’s the question I had for Greg Lambrecht, Coravin’s inventor when I talked to him in July
“There were never any exploding bottles,” Lambrecht said. “The first notice we had was in February [2014]. The bottom of a bottle fell off. It was determined that the bottle had been dropped and cracked or chipped.”
Two more similar reports and Lambrecht sent out warnings to all those who had purchased Coravins to inspect bottles before using Coravin. He also changed the packaging to warn consumers to inspect all bottles before using his device.
Lambrecht explained that Coravins are limited to 1.5 atmospheres of pressure. All wine bottles can withstand 10 to 20 atmospheres. If there are any cracks or defects in the bottle, it will, essentially, fall apart and create a mess. “But there were never any exploding bottles and shards of glass flying everywhere as I’ve heard reported.”
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