Wine Tasting Question

You buy a glass of “reserve” wine from a bottle that is poured by Coravin.
A premier cru white burgundy.

Wine person brings over said bottle and it is the correct one with Coravin in place.
Person serves you a small amount to check. Wine is fine.

Wine person then goes back and opens a different bottle to bring you your glass of wine. Pours from the bottle into the small carafe . Presents it to you to pour into the glass which still has a small amount of wine. Pour is generous so maybe there is a consideration of volume from the Coravin. A nice white burgundy.

What would you do?

Ask them how their first day in the job is going? [wink.gif]

^^

That.

Or just ask them WTF? You might get a great answer.

Sorry–need to be specific. A different bottle of the same wine?

Don, a number of tasting room managers have told me that Coravined bottles only last for about a week and, once the bottle is half drunk, deterioration sets in quickly. I can’t think of a single reason why your pourer would open a second bottle, unless of course, the first bottle was empty :slight_smile:

Wait!

Isn’t the whole point of Coravin to let the wine sit as long as you want? Like years and years and years? Doesn’t get to the point of opening a different bottle, but this is the first I’ve heard that Coravin is only good for a few weeks.

Is that a fact? Anyone with some experience find that to be true? It’s one of things I keep thinking about but never commit to and this would be the deciding factor.

I don’t trust coravin for longer than 2 weeks.
It’s better than fridge/vacuum. But it sure ain’t years…

My only guess is that somebody decided to have one bottle be the tasting bottle and the other be the pouring one, lol. Or that first bottle was not full enough for your pour.

FWIW When I managed a wine program we had Coravin BTG and I never noticed any deterioration of the wine, longest I think I tracked one was 2 months.

One of the major retailers here in Auckland has been testing Corovin for the past 6 months, and last week I tried around 4 wines that had been broached multiple times over 5 months and they were all drinking well, in fact they all would have improved with decanting, some of the bottles were 3 quarters empty

I should add they are using the vintage needle pretty much all the time

To answer a few questions.
The second bottle that was poured was never presented to me. I have no idea what it was.
I refused it and made them pour the whole glass from the Coravin bottle that was 2/3 full.

This happened at a very nice restaurant in NYC with a pretty good (supposedly) wine program. I won’t rat them out because I don’t know the circumstances here. We eat very early and there is a chance that the usual folks weren’t around. The person who did this is the designated wine person with no other duties.

I asked the wine person to take back the glass I didn’t get to taste and watched the pour from the Coravin. I insisted. I wanted to just see here if others might have an explanation. Many thanks!

I would have done the same as you, Don. I have no explanation for the switcheroo though. Definitely very odd.

I would also have done the same. that seems like a very weird situation to me.

Pretty good self-control. I don’t think I could have gone through that without finding out what the second bottle was.

Also… some pretty damning takes on Coravin here. I work with one all the time with around 40 wines at any given time. We date every bottle and are pretty good about tasting before service after about 10 days. There are some wines that are fine for as long as a month, especially if those bottles stay on the full side. Only a few.start to deteriorate noticeably in a week and, yes, we dump them and charge out to waste. Occasionally we’ll come across one that has been around as long as 8 weeks and sometimes those are obviously bad, while sometimes they’re really just something we and the winermaker would not want poured to represent that wine.

It’s great to hear that you take appropriate care, given the experience that has been expressed here and on other threads regarding longer-term storage under Coravin. When I consider ordering from a restaurant with a Coravin list, I always ask about their storage policy, and more than half of them seem to have no idea that longer-term storage can be an issue (“Coravin and forget about it”).

I wonder, though, the extent to which your expectations play into the (understandably subjective) exercise of evaluating whether a bottle is still good enough to pour. Given the usually high pricing, wines I would typically be interested in ordering from a Coravin list are wines that I do not drink regularly – so I do not necessarily have a good frame of reference to say whether or not the wine is still correct. I might prefer, as the customer, that the restaurant have someone taste who is not looking at the fill level and the first access date, and has no expectations for the wine other than her/his past experience with it.

– Matt

There are several threads here with lots of disagreement. The consensus I’ve found among several people who were using them extensively for blind tastings and multiple wine directors and sales reps I’ve spoken with, which matches my personal experience, is that bottles are only consistently good for about 2-3 weeks. Some bottles will taste fine well beyond that, but many of them either show signs of oxidation or a loss of aromas beyond that time. Of course, a lot of people have serious vested interest and find no problems. Maybe it’s because they don’t want to find problems, or maybe they’ve been so incredibly lucky that they really should play the lottery. I say that because between me and the several people I know personally, we’re talking about a huge number of bottles that have definitely degraded in some way within 2-3 months.

What we have found is that, for us, Coravined bottles lose some aromas and flavors over time. We have only gone out about 6 weeks but the freshness is just not there. We never have more than a few bottles coravined at a time so our n is pretty small but over the last 18 months about 100 bottles.

I would have simply asked them - is this the same wine, and why did you open another bottle?

Maybe some demented idea on their part that bypasses the thought process?

Seems a common occurrence these days!

I’m interested in the Coravin issue though. I know some people who use it in their restaurants and they haven’t said much about losing freshness. Is there some characteristic of the type of wine that tends to fade?

I’ve had a few Coravined bottles and they didn’t seem off in any way, but I haven’t had as much experience as others. If some of you guys are finding damage in only a matter of weeks, that doesn’t speak well of the concept.