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Introducing oxygen to wine is good in the short term — decanting a bottle or swirling a glass opens up those aroma compounds that have been locked up for months or years, patiently waiting for the cork to be extracted. Prolonged oxygenation, however, is what causes your wine to become less appealing over time once you remove the cork.
It pretty much doesn’t matter what quality of wine you started with, an open bottle is only good for a handful of days before it starts to taste stale or tired. Neither Burgundy nor Barefoot can withstand the decaying power of oxygen. One of those is much sadder to pour out than the other, it’s true, but it’s wasteful either way.
That’s where a Coravin comes in handy. A Coravin is a device that inserts a needle into the cork of a bottle of wine allowing you to extract a glass or other small amount without exposing the wine to excess oxygen. Extracting a glass without removing the cork means that you have much longer — weeks, or even months — to finish a bottle, with less risk of pouring any of it out because life got in the way of you finishing it efficiently.
A Coravin isn’t an inexpensive device. The entry-level model starts at $149. But I would argue that it’s an extremely useful one for all kinds of wine lovers. Right now, several Coravin systems are on sale — up to 50% off certain packages for Black Friday. And it makes a great gift whether the wine lover in your life is a budding sommelier, or is just getting started down the fermented grape juice path.
How does a coravin work?
A Coravin allows you to pour wine from a botle without letting oxygen in.
A Coravin seamlessly threads a hollow needle through the cork, extracting the liquid within with the push of a lever. A capsule of inert argon gas is built into the Coravin mechanism, repressurizing the bottle and eliminating even a microdose of oxygen from the freed-up space in the bottle. The hole left in the cork after the Coravin has performed its magic is microscopic, with no threat of spillage from continuing to store the wine on its side. While a small amount of oxygen can still enter the bottle through the tiny hole, the rate at which the wine becomes stale is much, much slower.
Coravin also offers solutions for screw-top bottles and sparkling wine.
Read more: A Guide to Coravin: The One Gadget Wine Drinkers Love Most
Admittedly, even as a sommelier, I received a Coravin and didn’t put it immediately to use. Not because I never had an occasion that would make sense to use it: There are numerous wine situations in which a Coravin is extremely handy, outlined below. More because I was operating under the misguided assumption that setting it up would be a complicated process. (I had the same assumption with a crème brûlée torch; apparently it’s gas capsules that make me think some Ikea-level assembly must be required.) News flash: It was up and running in all of about 30 seconds.
A Coravin is not just for wine collectors
The high-tech gadget couldn’t be simpler to use.
Most people think that this is where the Coravin’s utility stops; that they need to have a serious wine collection to justify having one, and they would be wrong. Indeed, those who have a large collection of world-class wines can benefit from having a Coravin, much like wine bars or restaurants can justify it for having a deep selection from which they may offer by-the-glass pours of exemplary producers, regions or vintages. With a Coravin you can sample a bottle to see how it’s getting along age-wise, or even just to determine whether it fits the bill for a particular meal.
But even if your “wine collection” consists of a dozen motley bottles that were mostly gifted or leftover from parties, or if you rarely have more than a bottle or two on hand at a time, you may find one or more justifications below that describe your relationship with wine, and makes having a Coravin make sense. Plus, it’s fun, and people tend to be a little dazzled seeing it in action.
For solo or split households
If you use wine mostly in cooking, you might not go through bottles before they start to sour.
A standard bottle of wine holds about four to five glasses, depending on the generosity of the pour. (In terms of tracking one’s alcohol consumption, you can’t pour half the bottle into a large-bowled glass and call it a single serving, by the way.) As a household of one I find myself in this situation constantly: wanting to open a bottle at home to have a glass or two, and then realizing my schedule won’t allow me to revisit it until too many days have passed.
Or maybe cooking something one night that calls for a red, and then having a chilled white craving the following day. Not to mention the occasional recipe that calls for a splash of wine, leaving the rest of the bottle untouched if you’re not having a drink that night. I have, on occasion, forgotten about a bottle in the fridge that may have a day or two left in it, and then opened a new bottle.
How often do you find yourself discarding leftover wine? Once a month? Even if your bottle preferences top out at $20, if you’re routinely pouring out half the bottle, an entry-level Coravin justifies its cost after just 15 bottles. If your wine preferences skew even a little more expensive than that, it pays for itself in much less than a year.
A household of even two makes it relatively easy to finish a bottle of wine, but if one of you is a nondrinker, or your wine tastes generally differ from one another, this can also apply to you.
For consuming less alcohol
Have one glass, or even half a glass, without the stress of the entire bottle going bad.
How many times have you drunk more than you want to at home because, well, the bottle was already open and wine doesn’t stay good that long, so…
A Reddit thread outlines a surprising benefit to owning a Coravin, which is actually drinking less. With mindful alcohol consumption on the rise, several commenters remarked on how they thought they’d use the Coravin for occasional sampling from various prestige bottles, but what it was especially good for was prolonging the life of a single bottle, whose contents might be drunk over a week or two, aiding in slowing down their personal consumption.
If not every night is a wine drinking night, or if you like to limit your consumption to less than a glass just to have with dinner, or to relax before bed, a Coravin is a perfect method to allow that bottle of wine to become many more servings than just the standard five or six. As a wine instructor I drink wine out of the house for employment reasons several times a week. Sometimes at home I don’t feel like drinking, but nothing pairs with food like wine does, and half a glass gets the job done for most of the kinds of dinners that are consumed on a couch rather than at a table.
For wine exploration
Go ahead, uncork a few bottles at once and worry not about any of them going to waste.
My first go at the Coravin was a unique situation due to my experience as a wine writer. I needed to taste about six bottles of Chardonnay, and had only given myself that night to accomplish it. Even with a Chardonnay-loving friend over to participate, there was no way we were going to make an appreciable dent in half a case of wine in one sitting.
The Coravin was thus unpackaged, and I was immediately hooked. It was easy, it was dazzling and it prevented an unintentional midweek binge from taking place.
You don’t have to be on a wine writing assignment to find this situation could apply to you. If want to have the sort of comparative tasting described above just for fun, if you’re a wine club member and have a friend over to taste a bunch of new bottles, if you’re studying wine and learning to blind taste, or if you actually want to pair different wines with different elements of a meal you made at home, a Coravin better allows you to open multiple bottles at once without the risk of wasting any juice in the process.
