My suggestion above was to use a small airtight ziplock bag for the Repour when it is not in the bottle. Or maybe a very small volume bottle. This should keep it longer. Will test next week.
John & Todd,
I am going to 
a bit . . .
There are at least a couple of versions of the “Original Vacu-Vin” as well as a shitload of knockoffs and other versions I have the two that are pictured below.
The one on the left is the newer "Original Vacu-Vin and in my personal experience it is a POS! I would agree with anyone using this that is not effective.
The one on the right is the original “Original Vacu-Vin” and in my experience it does a decent job. For me the key is to moisten the slit opening that looks a little like . . . well, moisten it before pumping. I am not sure if technically a vacuum is formed, but this version does form an air tight seal as evidenced by the pop of air when it is reopened. I would hate to think that I am making my wine worse by using this and taking away the nice volatiles.
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Interesting, the Vacu Vin is still my current method. I am 100% certain they create a very nice vacuum, because when I open one back up there is a loud sound consistent with a vacuum release. Maybe I am just better at it than you are. 
Yikes.
That aside, I believe there is considerable literature suggesting that the Vacu Vin is a sham. Wine Spectator and Wall Street Journal both did independent tests and, in Specator’s case, tested the old and new versions of the seal. Both publications’ lab tests reported nearly total failures, which were consistent with professional taste tests suggesting an inability of tasting panel participants to discern the recorked and vacu vin samples. If I recall, the Spectator’s first article on it was titled something like “A Great Sucking Sound And That’s All”
yeah kind of yikey as I wrote it but I let it “slide”
Disappointing to hear that my my go-to method is a sham though . . .
P.S Maybe the authors of those articles forgot to moisten the slit!
I have the original one.
Yes, the pump sucks some air out, so there’s that little pop when you release the stopper. But that’s nothing like a full vacuum, so there’s some oxygen in there.
I used it for a year or two, but I found the leftovers had no flavor if I was, say, more than one-third of the way through the bottle.
Just think about it: You’re creating a partial vacuum. What’s doing to happen to the elements in the wine that evaporate to create the aroma? They’re going to evaporate even faster in a low-pressure environment! And you’re not going to be sniffing it when they do.
I assumed it would work but was forced, through observation, to realize that it didn’t. I’d rather just recork a bottle and refrigerate. I think you lose less of the aroma that way.
I haven’t tried it yet, but I think putting tape over the end (not unlike the original seal) may work.
I’m impressed and more than a little surprised at how good the wine was after more than two weeks. That said, this is just one example, so I’m withholding judgment until I try it on some more bottles.
Yes, that’s an interesting idea as well.
We have tested using Coravin and Repour in our tasting room. I was high on both initially but both have limitations for commercial use. We still sell Repours and I think they are good for home use if you don’t finish a bottle. We now use the Coravin for library wines only, while at home I use my Coravin mainly on 750ml’s of sauternes and port.
Our everyday wine preservation is now a Winekeeper unit which constantly pumps argon into the bottle. They offer single bottle up to multiple bottle units. We have two 4-bottle units and so far we like them - and they preserve wine well. The argon canisters are less expensive than Coravin on a per use basis too and one Winekeeper argon canister is good for about 12 bottles of wine with constant pouring. We have been using these since early April.
I’m curious as to what you found lacking with Coravin. I’ve done a bunch of research over the past 10 years or so on this kind of thing and one issue I can see with Coravin is the difficulty of making sure you’re injecting enough argon to completely fill the space as the bottle is used over time, and making sure it stays filled.
We use one in the wine bar where I work and have pretty good luck with most wines, though some consistently have a shorter life than others. We use the adapter device attached to an Argon tank that’s been mentioned here on WB because cartridge costs were getting high.
Out of curiosity, does that preservation system completely replace the oxygen in the bottle with argon, or just enough to add a protective layer (since I understand argon is heavier than oxygen). If just a layer then what would be the difference between that and one of those cannisters that sprays argon into the bottle?
I know OP said no Coravin but just wanted to say I am loving my Coravin. It has had quite a big impact on how I drink and enjoy wine.
Now I may at anytime have 6-8 bottles on rotation and I will drink what I feel like the most at that moment, sometimes trying 2-3 different wines over the course of the evening.
Eurocave Wine Bar 2.0.
The Coravin was a challenge to use for our associates especially during peak hours plus we were burning through cartridges at a good rate. We did not want the safety concerns (or permitting required by the town) with installing an adaptor on the Coravin to use it with a larger Argon canister, so we looked for other options.
The Winekeeper spout has an adjustable tube that you insert into the bottle, tighten the neck screw, and then attach the tube leading from the canister with a quick connect. The bottle is pressurized and each time you dispense wine, it pumps argon into the bottle from the bottom displacing all oxygen.
The one thing we have noticed is that when you dispense a wine it gets a little fizzy so we have mini carafes we pour into first, give the wine a swirl and then pour the wine into the stem. We pour a lot of big reds (cab, malbec, petite sirah) so this extra step actually helps open up the young wines. The cartridges are small in size so they are easy to store, very easy to replace (one cartridge screws into the back of each four bottle unit) and the cartridges are disposable.
We only got the units in April and they seem pretty durable - although we did have to get a replacement part when one of our former associates pulled the spout out of a bottle without loosening the screw on the bottle (causing the rubber seal to break). ![[head-bang.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/b1cd199e4b2b2988b5107c3c9598fd28dc92a776.gif "[head-bang.gif]"){kind=small}
Agree. I have a couple of .375s, a .500, and a .250.
There is no protective layer. Gases don’t behave like liquids and form layers, which is good because 1% of air is argon.
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What about CO2? You read about it forming a blanket over fermentation tanks, and occasionally someone is asphyxiated when they fall in a tank. And I saw bees dropping dead over a bin of spontaneously fermenting zin at Ravenswood once.
FYI, as has been discussed in other threads, argon does not form a protective layer because it’s heavier than oxygen. At any temperature where the wine is liquid, the gas molecules are moving at pretty high velocities and colliding with each other. These processes keep the different gases in a bottle essentially uniformly distributed throughout the headspace. So, you need a system that replaces all of the extracted wine with a non-reactive gas like argon because any oxygen in the headspace will come in contact with the surface of the wine.
-Al
The kinetic processes that mix the different components of the gas take some time. So, if you are actively producing CO2, like when a wine is fermenting, it takes some time to diffuse out of the fermentation vessel. When fermentation stops, you need some other method to protect the must/wine from oxidation.
When you first squirt argon into a partially empty wine bottle, it falls to the bottom. But, then it starts mixing throughout the headspace. I’d have to do a calculation to be more precise, but it’s like minutes to tens of minutes over the size of a wine bottle.
-Al