28 Sep Please The Palate Pick of The Week: Drinking Wine with Coravin Visionary and Founder Greg Lambrecht

One of the items that got me through Covid was my Coravin Preservation Wine System. And I have been using it ever since. When I have wines to taste for an article or host a virtual wine tasting, I use my Coravin so that I do not need to open up all the bottles and then try to drink them within a few days. I love my Coravin so when I was invited to join Coravin Visionary and Founder Greg Lambrecht for dinner as part of the Coravin World Wine Tour, I did not hesitate. And that is why Drinking Wine with Coravin Visionary and Founder Greg Lambrecht is the Please The Palate pick of the week.

For the month of September 2025, Coravin brought exceptional wines and restaurants together as part of their second World Wine Tour. Select restaurants around the country offered an exclusive Coravin wine list, featuring prestigious wines rarely available by-the-glass. It was a way for guests to explore the world of wine, one glass at a time.

Coravin Preservation Systems has revolutionized the way people enjoy wine. The Coravin needle gently pierces through natural or agglomerated corks without displacing cork material, allowing you to pour wine without opening the bottle and keeping the wine fresh by protecting the wine from oxygen. The idea was created by Greg Lambrecht, who started to design Coravin in 1999. With a Bachelor of Science in Nuclear Engineering and a Masters Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Greg holds numerous patents in the fields of gynecology, general surgery, cardiology, and orthopedics. He worked in product and business development within Pfizer’s Medical Technology Group and has developed and launched numerous successful orthopedic implants. One of his patented inventions was a chemotherapy delivery system where a micro-needle was used to access an implant underneath a patient’s skin. It is this micro-needle that helped inspire Coravin.

A collector and drinker of wine, Greg initially had the idea when his wife was pregnant and stopped drinking wine. He wanted to drink wine but not an entire bottle. He wanted to drink a glass of wine without having to open the bottle. It was 1999 and he spent the next 12 years developing and testing his system and then another two years before launching in the market in 2013. Greg bought cases of wine and set up trials. He would test year after year a new bottle of wine next to a wine he had tasted via Coravin the previous year(s). Over time, he had five years worth of wines and found that the wines were as preserved and fresh whether they had been tasted via Coravin for the first time or one year prior or five years prior.

“Cor” is “heart” and “vin” is “wine” in Latin. Together, Coravin is the heart of wine. And the heart of wine is to drink what you want when you want. It changed the way people drink. Want a glass of white wine and a glass of red wine at dinner? You can! Want to taste a vertical flight of wines? You can! You can enjoy those single glasses and know that the wines will be good to enjoy another time in the future.

Since Coravin launched, there have been different models. There are currently three versions of Coravin. The Coravin Timeless, the original, is perfect for home use, enabling you to preserve wine for months or years. The Coravin Pivot was designed for restaurants, as well as casual drinkers, and preserves a wine for up to four weeks (this is far more than the two or three days a wine typically lasts after opening). And there is the Coravin Sparkling that helps preserve bubbly wines for up to four weeks. No longer do you have to open a bottle and hope to drink it within 2-3 days. You now have a month, or more, with Coravin.

At the World Wine Dinner, we enjoyed a variety of wines, all served with Coravin. Wines included Bouchard Pere & Fils 2018 Chassagne Montrachet, Dom Perignon 2015, Albert Bichot Pouilly-Fuisse 2021, Bouchard Pere & Fils Premier Cru Clos du Roi 2017, Daniele Conterno Barolo Bussia Riserva 2015, Opus One Overture MV, Timeless by Silver Oak 2020, and Kacher Beerenauslese 2019. We also tasted some wines that had been last poured with Coravin a year or two before and they were still fresh.

As a fan and regular user of my Coravin, it was a treat to meet visionary and founder Greg Lambrecht and learn the story behind the wine preservation system that has changed the way we drink wine.