What is to be this Christmas? Something woolen or silky? Something sparkly? Something extravagant and very fragrant? … or something bibulous? And techy. And something that will keep on giving pleasure?
Coravin, the world leader in wine preservation, has launched a limited-edition ‘Forest Green’ addition to its Timeless range and, as part of the company’s ongoing commitment to reducing both global wine wastage and its carbon footprint, is supporting reforestation with One Tree Planted.
Through the new partnership, Coravin pledges to plant a tree for every limited-edition Forest Green Timeless Six+ system sold on Coravin.com during the festive season. Coravin’s mission is “to revolutionize the way the world experiences wine”, and the Forest Green Timeless Six+ system allows wine lovers to enjoy, pour and explore wine without removing the cork, perfectly preserving the remaining wine for weeks, months, or even years.
Greg Lambrecht, Coravin’s founder and inventor, comments: “Eleven years after launching Coravin, I’m thrilled to see that a glass of wine is now poured with Coravin every second of every day, which is nearly 300 million glasses. And counting!”
Born in Manhattan, NY in 1969 with an Austrian mother and German father, Greg moved to Newport Beach, California, at the age of eleven. Inspired by his grandfather, who worked in guided missile weapon systems development, Greg studied Nuclear Engineering ( Plasma Physics) at IT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). He then worked in Japan for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd on advanced reactor systems before returning to MIT to study for a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering.
“Then I worked for Pfizer in medical therapies, developing new products in orthopedics (hip and knee prosthetics, as well as trauma implants and devices), vascular (new implantable ports for renal therapies and chemotherapy), cardiology (cardiac catheters and access devices). Surgical tools in general.
“Medical professionals would send me bottles of wine as a thank you. I quickly built up an eclectic collection of wines from around the world. A passion for fine wines was born.”.
Lambrecht’s Eureka moment came during his wife’s second pregnancy when she stopped drinking wine with him. “ That was the start of the idea for a wine system which allowed to you enjoy wine without having to finish the bottle. The most important inventions are not the result of new technology. They are the result of a new understanding of an old problem! How do you drink wine when you don’t want to have the whole bottle?”
Greg invented the wine-preservation system, Coravin, in 1999, with the first functional prototype out in 2001 while still running two companies – Viacor (percutaneous cardiac valve therapies) and Intrinsic Therapeutics (spinal implants to improve outcomes of disc surgery in the lower back). The Coravin company launched in July 2013, marketing to wine professionals “to optimize their wine-by-the-glass programs”. It went down with sommeliers, connoisseurs, and restaurants such as New York’s Del Posto and 11 Madison. Wine bar Praelum was one of the earliest converts. The Model Eleven is the first of a digital series. Fully automated and Blue Tooth connected, it can be used on screwtops.
Continues Lambrecht: “Unlike Scotch – when you can pour yourself a glass and come back to the bottle a couple of months later and it’s still good- wine goes bad. So you’re forced to consume it quickly. With a Coravin, you can [our a glass faster than removing a cork! And enjoy a single serving of great wine without actually uncorking it! I was sitting in my kitchen one day with a bottle in one hand and a needle from my chemotherapy system in the other. And thought: there’s got to be a way to bring these two worlds together. And there was!”
Coravin’s devices involve inserting a needle through the cork of a bottle without displacing any of the cork material. As wine is extracted through the needle, it is replaced with pure argon gas. The remaining wine is left untouched by oxygen, ensuring its freshness until the next pour as if newly opened. For screwcap bottles, there are self-sealing silicone screwcaps that can withstand up to 50 punctures of the Coravin needle and preserve the wine for up to three months. The table-top device can break down a 750ml bottle into seven sample-size bottles without exposure to air, preserving the wines’ freshness for up to a year.
“The needle goes through the cork,” explains Boston-based Lambrecht. “ You don’t want oxygen to contact the wine. That’s the key and the most basic design element. When you press the trigger to release the wine, argon goes in. It’s non-reactive and odorless. Argon plasma is a very common thing in medical devices.
Coravin fits everything from half bottles to magnums. And can be operated with one hand! Sommeliers can restore the perlage of very old Champagne. You can rejuvenate, for example, a 1970s Ruinart and it’s like it never left the cave. Every capsule will preserve seven bottles of wine. And you can drink it again weeks and months later.”
The name is a portmanteau of the Latin word for “heart” (“cora”) and the French word for wine (“vin”). “I wanted Coravin to be a tool to explore the extraordinary variety of wines at your own pace and not be dictated by a bottle.”
In 2021 came the Coravin Sparkling. Greg adds, “There are two issues with champagne when you open the bottle: it can oxidize and lose its effervescence. The good news is that champagne contains carbon dioxide, which is heavier than oxygen, so very little air gets in when you pour it. With Coravin, we use argon gas, a noble gas, that pushes the wine out of the bottle into the glass, minimizing air exposure. With sparkling wine, it protects itself from the air that enters when you pour it because CO2 is released and pushes the air out. However, you need to make sure that no more carbon dioxide escapes and no oxygen enters. So, we have a stopper that fits on any bottle.
“Some of our products are being used with whiskies, scotch, sakes, and sherry. We are in 60 countries, pretty much anywhere wine is made or sold. Our biggest market is the USA, followed by France, the UK, Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.
“I’m just a guy who was really good with needles. I was a wine lover too. I identified and met a need.”.
