Greg Lambrecht looked at the wine bottle and thought this made no sense: enter the Coravin

Engineer and biomed executive Greg Lambrecht came up with a wine preservation system that’s turned the industry upside down.

Coravin founder Greg Lambrecht. Picture: David Geraghty

It’s probably not surprising that it took a graduate from the famed Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a background in nuclear engineering to look at a wine bottle and think to himself that it made absolutely no sense. When that same individual is also a serial entrepreneur, you know he is about to shake up the industry and reshape how it deals with ­consumers.

Greg Lambrecht, New Yorker by birth, schooled in California and now a Boston local, enjoyed wine but when he only wanted a glass or two he was left with a bottle that would quickly go off as it had been exposed to oxygen.

That left him with some pretty awful choices – drink the whole bottle so as not to waste the wine, serve it to friends the next day simply because it had been opened and needed to be drunk, or pour the rest of the wine down the drain.

“When I was younger I went to my first winery, had a taste and thought this is the best thing I’ve ever tasted. I just became obsessed. I didn’t drink a lot, I just wanted to taste and learn, and then when I was at college, I started to realise there were so many varieties – which is what I love about wine,” Mr Lambrecht tells The Australian.

“I could get different wines, from California, from Australia, Germany, from anywhere, and I want to be able to compare them side by side. And I really started to realise that we built this entire culture of wine consumption around this 750ml bottle which is one single serve.

“You have got to finish it when you open it because it oxidises when you start pouring it.

“So I started to feel some frustration that I couldn’t do things that I wanted to do with wine.”

This dilemma hit home when he got married. His pregnant wife couldn’t drink wine and if he opened a bottle for himself was stuck with the whole bottle instead of being able to savour just one glass.

“And so I was sitting in my kitchen thinking there has got to be a better way,” he says.

“Luckily, I worked in biomedical engineering and had developed an implant – it was one of the first things I did – for Pfizer that went underneath the skin and was for chemotherapy delivery or long-term drug delivery, going into the heart, and accessing it over and over again.

Greg Lambrecht’s device helps wine last longer after the bottle is opened. Picture: David Geraghty

So I got really good at needles that didn’t do damage to things.”

It was then, reaching back to his background in engineering and biomechanics, that he invented the Coravin wine preservation device which uses a surgical-like needle to pass through the cork. The wine can pour out but a canister of argon gas prevents oxygen entering. The wine stays perfectly preserved within the bottle for years or even decades, but can be served by the glass.

It works for both corks and screw top wines, and also sparkling wines.

He made his first prototype in 1999. Millions of Coravin devices have been sold throughout the world. Lambrecht says the system has served more than 200 million glasses of wine, both at homes and in restaurants.

Then came Covid-19.

“We were selling millions of dollars a month to the trade (restaurants, cafes) and then in April of 2020 we sold a total of $435 to the trade. But then the consumer came on with a vengeance, and 2020 proved one of the best years for us. People were cooking at home, people were baking, people were making great bread at home and they want to be able to drink great wines at home too.”

Mr Lambrecht, who is also the founder of spinal implant company Intrinsic Therapeutics, is in Australia for a quick tour of customers and gatekeepers of the wine industry. He is showcasing his latest Coravin evolution, the Vinitas, which fractionalises wine or spirits from the bottle into seven smaller 100ml bottles in minutes. These mini-bottles are perfectly sealed and ready to serve. A winery could send samples of wines before consumers commit to buying the entire bottle, and a wine shop could fractionalise a luxury wine into mini wine bottles that can be sold at more affordable prices.

For restaurants the traditional Coravin system has been a game changer, with many venues now offering expensive wine by the glass without the danger of the wine going off before all of it can be sold.

Last year Brisbane’s Cru Bar + Cellar won Australia’s Wine List of the year, with its extensive ‘‘wine by the glass’’ wine list heavily relying on Coravin. This has given its diners options such as a 150ml glass of 2018 Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, priced at $400, a glass of 2019 Domaine Bonneau de Martray Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru for $250, or a glass of Henschke Mount Edelstone Shiraz 2009 for $100.

“The feedback we are getting from our customers is that those wines by the glass are selling well,” said Cru Bar sommelier Chris Walker.

“You wouldn’t think someone would pay $100, $200 or more for a glass of wine, but they are doing that. People are drinking less, but drinking better.”

“Some people have described it as democratising these high-end wines,” Lambrecht remarks.