© Coravin

Is it possible to change a wine writer's mind by demonstrating how a previously derided mechanism is supposed to actually work?

Our US editor retests a revolutionary wine accessory, this time following the actual instructions.

In August I irked the makers of Coravin with a less-than-glowing review of their new screwcap extension. Coravin chairman and founder Greg Lambrecht immediately reached out to schedule a retest.

I was happy to do it because, as I explained in the original story, my conditions for the original test were sub-optimal. I didn't know how to use the Coravin beforehand, and I didn't have a temperature-controlled room for the "accessed" bottle to sit in during the days between opening the bottle for the first time and then trying it again.

For those who don't know the Coravin, it's a revolutionary wine preservation system that allows people to "access" wine inside a bottle without removing the cork. Restaurants use the Coravin to offer interesting wines by the glass without the need to sell the whole bottle right away. Home users also like it; you can have half a bottle tonight, and the other half next week.

The Coravin is old news to wine aficionados; the screwcap extension is new. It's basically a large screwcap with a gummy plastic middle through which one inserts the Coravin needle. The needle removes the wine, then injects neutral argon gas into the bottle. The idea is that the layer of argon gas will prevent the wine from oxidizing. You can take subsequent glasses from the bottle using the needle, if you know how.

To do the retest, Lambrecht bought six bottles of the same Australian Shiraz I used for my original story. He arranged to have myself and a Master Sommelier friend – Peter Granoff, partner at Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant – taste the wines with Peter Johnson, a Coravin account manager. Granoff and I would taste the wines, sign the bottles, and then reconvene two months later to see if Coravin had preserved the wine as promised.

This didn't work out perfectly either, because the two-month anniversary happened to fall while my wife and I were scuba diving on Pelileu, and I was loath to come home for the Shiraz test (instead of temperature-controlled housing, I spend my meager wine-writing pay on fabulous vacations. Yeah, my mother doesn't think that's a good idea either.)

When we finally reconvened, three months had passed since we "accessed" three bottles of 2013 Bird in Hand Nest Egg Mt Lofty Ranges Shiraz. Johnson had stored those bottles in Napa Valley in a private wine cellar, and even though the cellar lost power during the fires, he does not believe the temperature ever rose above 70 degrees Farenheit because it was not opened. So the storage conditions were good, this time.

Last week, Johnson brought all three Coravin-topped bottles of Shiraz back to Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant in San Francisco, along with three unopened bottles. Johnson designed the experiment. He took wine from just two bottles of Shiraz: one that had been accessed three months ago, and one freshly opened.

Johnson poured five glasses of wine for Granoff and myself and told us that all five were from the two bottles, and our sets were identical: either two glasses of fresh wine and three of three-month-open wine, or the other way around. Our job was to try to pick out the wine that had been opened in August and sealed with the Coravin cap.

I'll save you the tasting play-by-play and cut to the chase: Granoff and I agreed on which glasses were from the freshly opened bottle. And we were wrong.

The shocking thing which I probably shouldn't admit, given the negative feedback I got from the last article, is that it didn't taste like five glasses from two bottles of wine. We were most sure that two glasses were from the same freshly opened bottle, but they were not: one was freshly opened, and the other wasn't. And those were the only two glasses that tasted exactly the same. Honestly, I wish I had put a hidden camera on Johnson when he was pouring. Blind tasting is often humbling; in this case, it was also mystifying. Granoff and I were certain that one of the five glasses was a ringer from a third bottle, because the variation was so great from the others, but it was not.

Comparing to my notes from August, I believe even the glasses we liked best tasted slightly less fresh than when we first accessed the bottle. But I would still drink them, and Coravin doesn't promise to keep the wine fresh for three months. It was a good performance for the Coravin screwcap, so Lambrecht has earned a mea culpa from me.

"I'm just crushed that we didn't nail it," I told Granoff. "I was ready to do a victory dance."

"That just speaks to the technology," Granoff said. "With a device like this that's so groundbreaking, people feel compelled to pick holes in it. Even if if has flaws, it's still the best thing out there."

Mea culpa, Greg Lambrecht and the Coravin screwcap. Now if only I had paid more attention to how to use it so I can deactivate "spray the room with wine" mode.

Next time.