Libby’s Naked Wines diary: Why I adore Coravin
This week in Libby’s Naked Wines diary, she waxes lyrical about the benefit of Coravin
I meet Greg Lambrecht under the gigantic, sculpted unicorns of Mayfair’s Bacchanalia. Huge frescos surround us as waiters weave between tables and Roman busts.
This place is ostentatiously bold, but in a playful way, matching the energy of Lambrecht himself, who seems delighted by every person we greet and every dish placed before us. He knows our sommelier well and suggests she serves our first glass blind so we can guess the wine and where it comes from. Nothing like starting an interview with a bit of competitive skill-analysis. No pressure.
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Not that anyone could mind coming second to Lambrecht. His life’s achievements would fill a book, let alone this single column. During our lunch I learn he is fluent in Japanese, was a hot air balloon pilot and ‘jumper’, a mountain runner, a card counter – oh and he’s saved countless lives with his medical inventions, designed and built himself in his workstation at home.
Libby’s Naked Wines diary: Coravin allows me to have many bottles opened at any one time, the ideal way to live
Specialising in spinal health, Lambrecht had designed a device for chemotherapy patients, which allowed a needle to repeatedly access the heart with minimal risk. Little did he know this key medical invention would come into play with his other passion – wine.
He was only 16 when he first tried a Californian Cabernet Sauvignon and never looked back. A brain like Lambrecht’s is consistently curious, constantly learning, and looks for things which can never bore him. Wine is one such topic. It is always evolving, both as an industry and in the bottle, and a lifetime would not be enough to try it or learn it all. It is one of the reasons he likes to taste blind: “It keeps you honest,” he tells me. “And there is nothing so humbling as a randomised trial”.
Which is why I am here today. Coravin is a system which, using a thin needle to penetrate the cork and argon gas to blanket the remaining wine, means glasses can be poured while the rest of the bottle is preserved for years to come. The still wine version has been around for a while, but now sparkling can be saved too.
A few weeks ago, I sent two bottles of Champagne Constantine Réserve Perpétuelle (Naked Wines £30.99 Angel Price £29.99) to Bacchanalia and, using Lambrecht’s newest device, they had opened one. They presented us with glasses, some of the wine was from a bottle opened four weeks ago and the other just now. We all know how fizz goes flat, so surely this was going to be simple to guess? It was not. Neither of us could tell the difference and though we both made a prediction, we were both wrong.
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“By the way, this is a delicious wine,” adds Lambrecht, which is quite the compliment from a man who earlier said “Oh! That’s cheap!” to a £95 glass on the menu. Ok, it was Haut-Brion, but still, Lambrecht clearly has expensive tastes. He was correct however, the champagne was rich and refined, a truly stunning bottle. I do a double take at the price. A bargain too.
I ask how long Coravin can keep the sparkling fizzy, and Lambrecht tells me he’s tried it with bottles over a year old and it was perfect. He actually blushes with joy showing me a video. His enthusiasm is infectious.
Coravin began as a home project (“inventing is how I relax”) – Lambrecht made systems for friends in exchange for a bottle of wine. Now they have been used to pour over 150 million glasses of wine, around a glass every two seconds across the world.
“I want to create behavioural change,” says Lambrecht. “People say, ‘I never don’t finish a bottle’, but that’s because you’ve opened a bottle, and it makes sense to finish it. But there’s another way to live. I have six bottles open at a time at home so I can enjoy the glass I want every day. I want to democratise wine. Everyone should be able to drink a great glass wherever they are.” As goals go, that sounds pretty great to me.