Take a gander at this miraculous device… you know you want it.. Look, this thing serves absolutely no purpose behind an operational bar – I don’t think. At home though? That’s another story. I love vino! Don’t you? Being that I’m hogtied to a chick who’s been (and will be) on the wagon in perpetuity, I find myself – not only strategically hiding bottles of this, that and the other thing, all over the house- but frequently retrieving my lost stash and imbibing at home alone. Therefore, it behooves me to keep my – uhh – grape juice, as non-vinegary as possible, for as long as possible. Well, if you’re an anal aficionado like me, how the hell do you do that once you pop the cork (if you’re not gonna chug the whole damned thing at once)? Modern technology is your ticket… Enter: The Coravin Wine Access System 1000.
In a nutshell, it’s the wine drinker’s equivalent of a surgeon’s Da Vinci machine – used in Laparoscopic (minimally-invasive) Surgery. What it allows a thirsty bird to do, is extract a glass of wine at a time from a bottle without having to remove the entire cork. That’s pretty fucking brilliant! But, how the hell does it do that? The trick is twofold: (1) a relatively small/hollow needle is precisely guided into the cork (2) simultaneously, the innards are pressurized with Argon gas. The net effect is that wine is forced up through the small opening and into your lovely crystal goblet while that nasty, wine “corking” air never touches the wine. Argon is harmless and doesn’t set off (duh) oxidation like oxygen does. The needle is small enough that once it’s removed, the cork simply expands to seal up the tiny puncture wound. Neat trick, aye?
