Coravin and premox

So last night we had our monthly wine tasting dinner.
As usual, great hanging with these guys.

I happen to bring a 96 Verget MdT…
I know that white Burgs are known for premox.
But what surprised me was this…
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Well…how was it? How was the fill level? Assuming YOU weren’t the “coraviner” (based on your surprise by the hole), where did you buy the wine?

Oh ha sorry that was a quick post.

So I bought this a month ago at a retailer.
Noticed the puncture prior to opening it.

The wine was DOA.
So we concluded that some asshole coravin’d the wine, deemed it pox’d and decided to sell it…

I was not the coraviner…

Even if it hadn’t been premoxed before it was Coravined, from posts here of Coravin users, it sounds like it could easily have been oxidized from sitting around for many months or years after a Coravin draw.

Surely you have recourse with the retailer on an issue like that?!?

Oh yah.
They took it back right away.

I’m just shocked that this was trying to be pawned off by the original owner.
What a jackass.

Hopefully retailers in general are mindful of inspecting bottles for puncture holes these days.

It sucks to think that even if it was ok initially, that anyone would try to sell the rest of the bottle. [soap.gif]

Has anyone else come across this kind of situation?

When the technology first came out, more than one high end broker/retailer contemplated the possibility of selling bottles proven to be sound by coravin testing at a strong premium. I knew personally of one example, and others were confirmed by an old friend who was secondarily involved in the development of the original technology, and was one of the people warning that once a bottle is coravined you need to drink it pretty soon because it has been permanently compromised.

Just another data point to confirm.

And to the OP- I share your anger. Years ago when the wine forums were smaller and the wine world seemed a lot bigger, there were people who would admit that if they bought a case of wine and a bottle was heat damaged, they would sell the rest. All kinds of excuses and justifications for it. Today people don’t talk about it, but I know it happens a lot. I turn down appraisals with some regularity when circumstances suggest a person is selling because the cooler in their cellar went off in the summer for a few days. A big part of appraising a cellar is examining where the wine is located, and there are all kinds of subtle signs when someone is trying to sell a compromised collection.

What happened here is even worse.

Glad the seller refunded you- hopefully they cut off the original source of the bottle permanently.

I have been using a Coravin regularly for about 5 months now. I normally draw out around 20-25% of a bottle, then put it back in the cellar. Sometimes I do this twice, occasionally three times before pulling the cork.

So some bottles have sat for a few months after being drawn down. I have not tried to study the effects rigorously (e.g., opening a new bottle and a Coravined bottle side-by-side), mainly because I have yet to experience a bottle where I could perceive a change in the wine. Intuitively, one thinks that the breached bottles can’t last forever, but I have not yet identified any outer time limit.

I have been extremely happy with the product – it has totally changed how I drink wine and rekindled my interest in the hobby.

Agreed in my experience. It’s key for me to have weeknight glasses of nice wines.

Obviously OP’s story is appalling though! I can’t believe people actually do that. The scary part is that it’s possible to do so without impacting the foil on wines where the foil pulls off, so it wouldn’t leave this kind of evidence. A careful and small pour and cleanup may not be noticeable.

Be careful. There are lots of reports (including my own) of bottles not being in prime condition some months after being accessed.

My experience is that Coravined wines need to be consumed near term. Perhaps if you are only pulling a glass out and then opening the bottle your experience would be different. I have been burned so many times holding bottles long term that I essentially only use it now to make sure a wine is not flawed before going to a restaurant or event.

I haven’t come across this over ~4 months. What time frames are you talking about? Do you purge the needle of oxygen right before inserting?

I use mine extensively. I find as long as I purge before using the needle, use the needle on only warm corks (to allow them to reseal quickly) and finish the wine within a couple months, I don’t see any issues. In fact, I have a bottle sitting in which I took a glass out of over a year ago (as a test). I should open that and report back.

I have not researched the subject, and a couple of people here have made me nervous. So I just pulled corks on a 2000 Chateau Grand-Puy-Lacoste (1 glass previously drawn from the bottle) and 2007 Bouchard Corton-Charlemagne (2 glasses drawn). Both first punctured 3+ months ago. I figure older bottles will be more susceptible to factors influencing their evolution, and maybe the corks are more fragile.

Both are totally fine. To be precise, the GPL is excellent and the Corton is alright, more evolved than I would like but the same as when I first tried it (and I have had more oxidized bottles of this wine in the past). I still have zero incidents where a Coravined wine is noticeably off from first taste.

I would probably not Coravin an '82 Petrus and then put it away for a year, but my experience is that bottle deterioration over a few months is not an issue. I am sorry that others have had different experience. I have probably 50-100 bottles lying in the cellar that have been tapped. I will consume them relatively sooner than other bottles – when I’m looking to pull corks, I will choose them over full bottles – but I’m not sweating about them.

I’d say about 20% of my Coravined bottles showed deterioration if held beyond 2-3 months. I always purged the needle before insertion but never paid attention to the bottle temperature. Bottles would be put back on their sides after using the device.

I’m happy that others have had better success. I’m not sure if there was something else I could do to improve performance but with that failure rate plus the fact that most of my older bottles were ineligible due to sediment, I stopped using it.

I guess my point and ‘message’ is to be sure to inspect your old wine purchases.

Here’s another - old Barolo, wax capsule…
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Good lord I’m so sorry

Where are you getting these awful bottles from?