If you've ever wondered why wines from the Jura region of France appear on so many wine lists, how the Chenin Blanc grape suddenly became cool or why a device called Coravin is a now-indispensable tool in restaurants, look no further than the trendsetting sommeliers of New York.

Designed by Greg Lambrecht, a 44-year-old medical device entrepreneur from Massachusetts, Coravin is a tool that took 15 years to perfect—mostly in the basement workshop of Mr. Lambrecht's home. "It was my personal hobby," said Mr. Lambrecht during a recent phone call, noting that he never expected to create something that would become the darling of the sommelier world. "I just wanted it for myself," he noted in a subsequent email.

The device, as it is referred to by its users, is the size and shape of a child's microscope, though its purpose, of course, is fully adult. The technology appears to be simple: A medical-grade needle is used to pierce but not break the cork in a wine bottle. While the needle is large enough to draw the wine out of the bottle, it's not large enough that the cork can't close back in on itself. Argon gas is released by pulling a lever on the device, and that expels and replaces the wine, forming a protective blanket of sorts over the remaining wine and preventing the ingress of oxygen. This means that sommeliers—and wine-drinking amateurs, too—can sample a particular bottle over a period: a few days, weeks or months.

The list of restaurants currently pouring wines pierced by a Coravin (which costs around $300 or a bit less, plus about $10 for a gas canister that must be replaced often) is long and includes such notables as Del Posto, Eleven Madison Park, Nomad, A Voce, Craft and Clement Restaurant in the Peninsula New York Hotel, where Wine Director Jared Fischer decided to make every wine on his 250-bottle list available by means of the Coravin.

It's a bold move on the part of Mr. Fischer, with whom I met last week for a brief demonstration and a chat. I asked what inspired such an outsize commitment. There are a lot of great wine programs in New York, replied Mr. Fischer, who previously worked at Le Bernardin, and he wanted to distinguish Clement from the other restaurants. "You need to find some niche or something special in New York," he said. And besides, he added, "I wanted to be the first person in New York to do it."