Over the years I’ve tried many devices meant to preserve leftover wine in an effort to keep it tasting fresh. These included vacuum devices meant to extract oxygen in the ‘head-space’ between the remaining wine and bottle closure, and inert gas pumped into the open bottle to displace the oxygen, before recorking. Oxygen, you see, is the culprit in spoiling a wine once opened: just like an apple sliced in half and exposed to the air, the browning and spoiling process happens relatively quickly.
In practice I found that none of these devices made any real improvement – I couldn’t detect any discernable difference from bottles simply recorked and stuck in the fridge. But a few years ago a new generation of preservation devices emerged, based on more radical engineering and science, the most successful being a product called Coravin.
The Coravin system pushes a needle through the cork (so the cork is not removed) and, as wine is drawn off through the needle, it is replaced by inert argon gas so that in theory the wine is never exposed to external oxygen. The system is fairly large and unweildy, costs around £200, and has the additional cost of replacing the ‘consumables’ – the gas capsules used. It has proved very popular in commercial settings, allowing fine wines to be poured by the glass, and most users report that it drastically reduces oxidation, and does indeed work well.
A different take – Repour
I was recently contacted by Tom Lutz, a wine-loving chemist, about his entry into the wine preserving market. Tom says he too had tried a variety of gadgets without success: “They were too expensive, too complicated, and only partially effective,” he says. Tom and his wife Michelle set out to devise their own system, which is now on the market under the brand name ‘Repour’. An extremely simple solution in many ways, one-time-use stoppers are filled with an active oxygen absorbing material.
Responding to a question on a Guild of Sommeliers web site, Tom wrote: “Repour works by reacting with oxygen in the air, in doing so it creates a 21% vacuum in the bottle. While reduced air oxygen levels is the start, the real effectiveness in wine preservation comes from what happens to dissolved oxygen in the wine itself. By actively removing the oxygen in the air, coupled with Henry’s law (which states that the amount of dissolved gas in a liquid is proportional to its partial pressure above the liquid), Repour reduces disolved oxygen to below 0.03 ppm which is the magic that keeps the wine fresh until your return to pour another glass.” The stopper can be inserted and removed several times, continuing to work glass-by-glass.
Another interesting feature of the system, which other systems cannot replicate, is that it can also be used on sparkling wines: “Carbon dioxide doesn’t care what’s happening with oxygen within the bottle, i.e. oxygen vacating the system,” says Tom. “It doesn’t impact what happens to carbon dioxide, though as always it is important to re-stopper very soon after opening to stop the de-gassing of the wine.” Tom also says they are looking at developing a ‘clamping’ version of the device to make sure the carbon dioxide does not push the stopper out.
A ten-pack of Repour stoppers costs £19.99, so roughly £2 per bottle preserved, and can be purchased in the UK from uberstar.com, or direct from repour.com in the US.
Tom kindly sent me a pack of Repours to try for myself, so I gave the device a stiff test: closing a bottle of red Burgundy with around two glasses remaining in the bottle, which I left unrefrigerated on a kitchen worktop for just over three weeks before trying again. The results are described below.
I will try again, but my experience with leaving half bottle remaining of a 16 pound bottle of rose was very disappointing – after a 4 day “rest” under repour it tasted as though it had been left uncorked for 4 days. The experiment with a bottle of fizz was unsuccessful as the repair stopper was popped out (3 times) so I gave up!
Thanks for reporting back Paul. It will be interesting to see if any other reports ‘from the field’ come in on how people find it working for them. I believe they are developing a version specifically for sparkling wine that will also clamp onto the bottle neck, to overcome the problem you found.
I’d be interested to know how this compares with Argon gas canisters that are supposed to “blanket” the top of the wine. Maybe Tom you could do a comparative test of several different methods of resealing?
Thanks for the comment Chris. It’s a good idea and maybe after lockdown i will organise just that. My memory from using the gas cannisters a long time ago was that this device does a better job, but it would be much fairer to do a side by side test as you suggest.
Looks interesting – just ordered on Amazon (£20 for x10) and will test while in Corona Lockdown! But at £2 per bottle – 1 is only good for 1 bottle – I suspect not a huge market for them – how many people buy wines expensive enough to make them worth the money?
I agree Sam: a very niche product, and even serious wine lovers will generally not need it (assuming most usually finish the bottle), but I think it works well and on the right occasion shoukd be useful.
Tom this is very interesting…I assume the Repour capsules are not reusable and should be thrown away after one use? Still as you say £2 per bottle saved is not bad at all for those us for whom a Coravin is simply unaffordable
Mike, yes, the active substance in the capsule is designed to cope with absorbing all the oxygen from a 750ml bottle. I guess is you use it on a half-empty bottle just for one or two days, there will still be enough to do another half empty bottle, but Repour recommend one per bottle. The plastic capsules are recyclable according to the Repour web site.
Interesting, but where’s the control data (wine left in the fridge for 3 weeks)?
Alex, no rigorous scientific credentials were claimed for my trial, just an understanding that a bottle of red wine, left unrefrigerated with approx. two glasses remaining, would normally be expected to become severely oxidised after three weeks. But yes, such an experiment would be interesting – lining up the same wine and volume of remaining liquid, and testing Repour, Coravin and the fridge method against each other.