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A system that pours a glass of wine without opening the bottle
- FigBug 12y agoLooks pretty cool, but isn't cork on the way out? Will it work with a screw top as well?
- Stratoscope 12y agoCork only. Read how it works and you'll see that it can't work with a screw top. You can use Private Preserve with screw tops.
- FigBug 12y agoDo you know how private preserve compares to just pumping the air out, which is what I currently do?
- Stratoscope 12y agoMy feeling is that PP works better. I think this because the gas displaces all the oxygen, where pumping the air out only removes some of it. Best idea is to try a can for yourself.
- mattmaroon 12y agoThe cork should be on its way out, but if it is, it will be really slow. The better technologies (screw tops, bag in a box) are associated with cheap wines. It will be a long time before any substantial number of $20+ wines use them as a result. The wine makers would quite rather 10% of their product go bad and have to be refunded than have it be thought of as Franzia. (I have seen a lot more synthetic corks popping up, and this product might work with those.) It's the same with beer and cans.
- sjtrny 12y agoDepends where you live. Here in Australia twist top is king. Most bottles you buy that are <$40 from 2011 onwards are twist tops (excluding carbonated, people like to pop the cork even if it's a synthetic one). In recent trips to the US I've noticed that it isn't as popular. People there seem to think twist top is cheap or tacky.
- kghose 12y agoFor the person who has no time to put the cork back in the bottle ...
- dutchbrit 12y agoNo, air in the bottle after opening it still affects the wine, even if you put the cork back on. That's why they use argon.
- jsprogrammer 12y agoAnd who wants vendor lock-in with "proprietary argon gas capsules".
- pat2man 12y agoI assume they have a patent on it so it's unlikely that we will see any generic equivalent for a while.
- gyardley 12y agoMaybe, but I doubt it - machines using inert gas to preserve and pour wine have been around since Enomatic in the '70s. The only thing new here is the cheap price point.
- raverbashing 12y agoYeah, it only makes sense for bottles costing upwards of 100$
- sologoub 12y agoOr very limited vintages. I have a few bottles that were $35-50 when bought, but only had 150-300 cases made. No way to get another of that same kind and same year...
- mattmaroon 12y agoWhich makes the bottle now worth probably a few hundred at least.
- wvl 12y agoThe Sweethome likes it, but it's expensive: > "We tested the $300 Coravin system against Private Preserve, comparing bottles of wine that’d been saved for five days against a fresh bottle. While the Coravin-preserved bottle tasted more like the brand-new one, its price makes it impractical for many wine drinkers; it’s better suited for restaurant use, or serious oenophiles. For everyone else, Private Preserve is still the way to go." http://thesweethome.com/reviews/best-way-to-keep-open-wine-fresh/ http://thesweethome.com/reviews/best-way-to-keep-open-wine-f...
- omonra 12y agoSuper, thank you for the heads up
- pcurve 12y agoThat's a great link, thanks. Wine goes bad so fast that I was giggling in excitement when I watched the video. But then my jaw dropped when I saw the price of the machine. And it drop again when I saw the cartridge price. I can't help thinking that this is a product planned by MBA type. But I rarely spend more than $20 on a bottle of wine, and if the product is head and shoulder above competition out there, the company can pretty charge whatever it wants for people who routinely drink expensive wine, or restaurant establishments.
- JumpCrisscross 12y ago> It’s better suited for restaurant use, I'm a wine enthusiast with a restless palette. Even if I adored the last glass, I'll want something different next. This makes me a bad fit for bottles (in small groups). Consider the restauranteur offering wine by the glass. On the upside, glasses (should) deliver a larger margin than whole bottles. On the downside, unsold product is thrown out. This is why high-volume low- and moderately-priced wines sell by the glass. Lower-volume wines would be thrown out too often. The higher price point would make that wastage more painful. In New York, the Coravin system has saved me from having to choose between often mediocre wines and locking down to a bottle. It makes volume less critical, to the wine bar, in choosing which wines to offer by the glass. The palette thus broadens.
- geofft 12y ago
- _Adam 12y ago$11 per proprietary argon capsule. Each capsule can pour 75oz, or about 3 standard wine bottles. Not too bad, if you're serving high end wines.
- appplemac 12y agoI wonder if there will be a grey / black market for non-original capsules. Seems promising since, as far as I know, argon is not _that_ expensive to buy.
- mattmaroon 12y agoI've used the Pek Preservino system for years. Their argon comes in the same little cartridges as N2O or CO2 for siphons. In fact, I just started using N2O since it works well enough for just a couple days.
- huhtenberg 12y agoLooked it up. $12 for 4 cartridges, or $80 for 30 cartridges. That's pretty humane. But given that Coravin has a separate page for their board of directors, each with a full bio and a mugshot, I think it's safe to assume that their cartridges are non-standard.
- thesimon 12y ago10 litre bottle of argon is about $45. The capsule contains 20ml and costs $10 ($500/litre). So yeah, someone should be able to create non-original capsules for a lower price.
- qwerta 12y agoChinese knockout will use helium gas :-)
- benzofuran 12y agoYeah helium is running around US0.10 a liter give or take in most places, and will sneak out through the cork pretty quickly too.
- JonnieCache 12y agoThe real innovation here is they've invented an even more irritating and powerful way of breaking the back button.
- deeviant 12y agoWell, to be honest, they also managed to pull off another feat: They overcosted initial price PLUS insanely costed consumables. Truly, a gadget fit for a king(or people that don't like money).
- boie0025 12y agoYes, I finally gave up and re-typed the HN URL.
- b409ba0801cd21 12y agoI was able to get back with the back/forward pulldown(on Firefox).
- cookingrobot 12y agoI really consider this a failing of the browser. Clicking back should take me to the previous page I interacted with, never a redirect page.
- ytjohn 12y agoSeems like a great way of injecting poison into an unopened bottle of wine. I'll have to look into this for my next job.
- danmaz74 12y agoI remember a very old episode of Columbo where an air capsule system to open wine bottles was used for poisoning...
- usefulcat 12y agoI remember that episode, it was quite good. Saw it on netflix a while back.
- shalmanese 12y agoEh, any $1 hypodermic needle is sufficient to inject poison into wine. If you're worried about potential poisonings, your first priority should be to eliminate what's worrying you about potential poisonings.
- sz4kerto 12y agoI've used this a couple of times. It's good to test whether you want to drink the wine at a certain; they had some problems with breaking bottles but according to them it was a problem with the bottle. I lost my faith in >$100/bottle wines though, so I don't care of this any more.
- xg15 12y agoI'm looking forward to the face of the guy who uses this to open the $2500 wine bottle and then gets the needle stuck in it...
- tacostakohashi 12y agoDrinking the whole bottle seems like a much better solution to this problem.
- jnks 12y agoWay more fun, at least.
- fredophile 12y agoHas anyone tried any of these systems for anything other than wine? I like scotch but it also reacts with air after the bottle is opened. Obviously this system wouldn't work because the cork on a bottle of scotch has a plastic cap attached at the top. At $100+ for a good bottle of scotch I'd be willing to invest this kind of money for something that worked.
- elliottcarlson 12y agoPrivate Reserve works for this as well - but really, the most important thing when it comes to whisky is how you store it. The less air that's in the bottle, the longer it will last - also keeping it out of light. If your bottle is down to 1/3rd or 1/4th remaining it will change sooner than a full bottle. Changing isn't spoiling though - it's somewhat the same as the wine oxidation issue, but it has a different chemical reaction to the oxidation. It's still OK to drink, and some whiskys actually improve this way.
- steveax 12y agoThe high levels of ethanol in spirits slow the oxidation down tremendously. Unless you're taking over a year to go through a bottle I wouldn't sweat it. If you're worried about it, you could always transfer the spirits to smaller bottles after opening to minimize the air space.
- fredophile 12y agoI would say taking over a year to go through an expensive scotch isn't unreasonable if you have multiple bottles open.
- shalbert 12y agoIf you're not a wine enthusiast, this simply doesn't seem like a product worth anybody's time of day. However, it must be noted that this is an excellent idea for wine preservation. Just think about how great it must be to save an expensive bottle from needing quick consumption before it experience's the perils of too much oxygen.
- vegedor 12y agowell, that's something easily prevented beforehand.
- vegedor 12y agoSure it's time of festivities and alcohol becomes topical, not to say chic. Needles to say, I find this very sad.
- GhotiFish 12y ago>Coravin’s proprietary argon gas capsule good lord. Why must every product do this? Why? Whyyyy? Just make something good. Make something that works and is practical. I don't want to be taken for a ride. I don't want to be on a treadmill. I want something that doesn't make me dependent on a company that could go under at any time. Every time I see stuff like this, the more cynical I become.