Coravin’s Greg Lambrecht On Reclaiming Your Wine To Make Every Bottle an Occasion

Tired of letting half-open bottles of wine go to waste—or waiting years to open a special bottle, only to find it’s past its prime? Wine preservation becomes exhilarating as Coravin inventor Greg Lambrecht joins Kristi Mayfield to reveal the transformative power of this breakthrough wine gadget.

Uncorking more than preservation, Greg and Kristi dig deep into wine technology and the freedom to taste, explore, and savor every bottle on your terms—without fear of waste, compromise, or missing out on aging potential. This episode breaks down how wine lovers, collectors, sommeliers, and restaurant owners can leverage Coravin to revolutionize their own wine rituals and unlock new possibilities in wine education, curation, and service.

From tackling wine waste and empowering “drink less, drink better” lifestyles to expanding wine-by-the-glass programs at your favorite restaurants, Greg demystifies the economics, cultural shifts, and sustainable impact of Coravin. Plus, learn how this wine tool is primed to intrigue the next generation of wine drinkers—one perfectly preserved glass at a time.

Grab your CORAVIN NOW!

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL DISCOVER: 

• How to taste from any bottle without worrying about spoilage or waste—goodbye, anxiety about opening “special” bottles! 
• Why Coravin means more sustainable wine enjoyment, cutting down on both bottle waste and unfinished pours. 
• How wine lovers at any level can dramatically speed up their wine learning with side-by-side tastings at home, minus guilt or cost. 
• The future of restaurant and wine shop experiences—unlocking high-end wine by the glass and making wine more approachable for everyone.

Top 6 Takeaways and Timestamps

[00:04:01] Why Wine Goes to Waste—And How Coravin Solves It
Discover the problem with multi-serving wine bottles, short shelf life, and the real-life frustration that led to Coravin’s creation.

[00:07:14] Explore Without Compromise: Never Waste a Glass Again
See how Coravin lets you compare vintages, regions, and varietals side-by-side, unlocking intentional, guilt-free tasting.

[00:12:04] Restaurant Wine Upgraded: By-the-Glass Without Limits
Coravin helps restaurants eliminate wine waste and boost profits—while bringing top bottles by the glass to their menus.

[00:18:49] Home Wine Experience: From Preservation to Exploration
How everyday drinkers can reclaim their cellars, avoid overconsumption, and embrace the “drink less, drink better” movement.

[00:23:10] The Sustainability Impact of Coravin
Shed light on how reducing wine waste contributes to a more sustainable wine culture—plus insights on recyclable capsules and durable design.

[00:26:17] The New Generation & Single-Serve Wine
Why new tech and packaging innovations could make wine more accessible for c

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Transcript

Kristi Mayfield (00:00)
We all have one. You know, that special bottle of wine you're saving for a birthday, an anniversary, or any special event, or maybe you just don't know whether it's ready to drink, so you're afraid to pop the cork. Well, what if I told you, you don't have to wait any longer? You can try that bottle without any risk of it going bad or without the risk of trying it too early and wasting.

the rest of the bottle. In today's episode we are going to hear from Corvin inventor Greg Lambrooks and he's going to share with you exactly how to use this tool to completely transform your wine experience so stay tuned.

Kristi Mayfield (01:04)
I don't personally have a wine collection to rival even a beginner collection, I've picked up bottles through my travels and experiences that I'm holding onto, either for aging purposes or special occasions. But the truth of the matter is, they're wines I don't want to pop the cork on and drink all in one night. They're ones I'd prefer to enjoy a little bit here, a little bit there.

Wine, however, does not fit into the mold for this type of experience. So I've either left those bottles to age a little bit longer or I've ended up in the sad situation where a portion of that beautiful bottle simply goes bad and goes down the drain.

Kristi Mayfield (01:49)
think about the last time you stood in front of a wine rack, either at your own house or at a wine shop, and you see that special bottle, the one you've been saving and you want a glass of it immediately. But of course, You're not ready to do that. You're afraid it's going to go bad if you pop the cork. And in this feeling of hesitation, this fear of potential waste,

you are unsure what to do next. Well, today's guest is not only an engineer, he's an innovator. He looked at the same problem and instead of accepting it, he chose to solve it. today to welcome Greg Lambrechts the founder of Coravin And Greg, most of your interviews start by people asking you,

how your medical background inspired your development of the Coravin. But I want to start off a different direction with the why. You were doing all of this innovation in the medical arena, life saving, life altering work. But there had to be a personal moment with why you switched to wine.

Greg Lambrecht (02:51)
thanks for having me on, Kristi I'm lucky to have entered the world of wine by addressing my own problem. And it was very similar to what you were describing. I had all these different bottles that looked delicious, but the only way I was going to find out was by pulling the cork and finding out. And there were two problems with that. One, I work in medicine and so frequently in surgery, you really don't want to be drinking a whole bottle by yourself. My wife at the time really didn't drink

very much and so I was always dealing with bottles of wine that went bad. And then the other thing was that I didn't know if the wine was ready. So you you've got these bottles of wine and people tell you, oh, it's not ready yet. You give it a couple of years. There's a drinking window, I wanted to understand what a wine tasted like when it was too young, what a wine tasted like when it was just right and when it was too old. I was frustrated that unlike almost everything else,

that is sold to you as a beverage, wine is sold to you in a multi-serving container and has a very short half-life once you open it. And so, you know, I was thinking my dad was a type 1 diabetic. He was injecting himself with insulin throughout my entire childhood. And then there were two different medical devices that I developed that involved needles. So I was really good at needles

So the technological capability was there to solve the problem. think the key was my growing frustration that this beverage that I love so much, wine, was one that I could only explore in a volume that they sold it to me. That was great when Friends came over, but made no sense when I was on my own. And I think that made me realize, hey, you there are all of these situations where I would love to have a glass of

but I'm not because it means opening a whole bottle. So there were all these times during the week where I just skipped having a glass of wine, even if it would have been perfect, because I felt like so wasteful to drink one glass, put it in the fridge, and then come back to it a couple of days later and find it had gone off. So it's a wonderful thing. It's been with us for 8,000 years, but I was frustrated that this container was not the container that I would consume. I didn't want all of it.

Kristi Mayfield (04:51)
That is a very common scenario around my house. being in the wine world, I often want to have a glass when I sit down in the evening as my way of relaxing and celebrating the day. And I'm quite certain that you, our listener, many of you are thinking the same thing.

The challenge obviously started with the technological side of things. And I'd like to fast forward there's some amazing videos of you with your prototype, can you walk us through when you first created a working

I'll call it a Coravin, you might not want to call it a Coravin back at that time. And that's funny. Yes. And you shared it with some friends, but let's talk about this tradition around wine. not a lot changes over time in the world of technology. So you created something

Greg Lambrecht (05:32)
It was called Wine Mosquito back then.

We've gotten better at naming.

Kristi Mayfield (05:54)
game changing with the Coravin. And how did this in the world where the cork is king and pulling that cork is part of the experience. how did you convince people that that part of the tradition, that that experience could

still result in a fabulous wine experience without the cork being pulled and the clock starting to tick on that bottle that they pulled the cork out of.

Greg Lambrecht (06:19)
You know, it's a really important question because it involved a lot of time and thought. We were very cautious about the launch of Coravin. I have to admit that the number one driver was the positivity of the change. I still pull corks. I pull corks on every bottle that I drink because I don't want to waste the gas on the last glass, right? But I'm rarely pulling corks on a full bottle. I've already had a glass or two or my spouse and I want to have the same bottle and we've got half a bottle of it left that Coravin over the last six months to a year.

So I'm still pulling corks. still have that experience with every bottle. I just don't have it every glass that I have. And the benefits of that, of what I was experiencing at home were huge. It went beyond the, I'd like to taste this, or I want a glass of this, to I can now pair a white and a red and a dessert wine. I can now try half a glass of five different wines from around the world. I explore, I bought 12 different vintages of the same wine.

try a taste of each one side by side. could show them to friends. When friends came over, I was pouring them whatever they wanted, not just what I had open or what I was willing to open. And so I knew that there was a really positive outcome. I'm not a zealot saying you've got to pour everything through cork and pull the cork on bottles. Sure. I do that all the time. Still full bottles when I have friends over and there are all these situations where that tradition.

still makes a lot of sense, but there's a pile of times when it doesn't. To convince people that there's two types of skepticism. There's cultural, actually three, cultural skepticism, there's efficacy skepticism, doesn't work. Cultural, you know, what are you doing messing with my culture of pulling the cork and drinking the whole bottle? Of course you can drink a whole bottle, right? And then the third one was cost, know, economic.

So you've got the efficacy, the economic, and you've got the cultural resistance. From an efficacy perspective, we were very conscious of this. I use and we use Coravin on somebody else's wonderful product, right? They made their wine and we use our Coravin on it. And we're claiming that that wine is going to be the same a year later, however long later after it's been Coravined. I didn't want...

winemakers seeing their wine for the first time under Coravin out in the field and go, what the heck is that? So we ran these really big efficacy tests, right? Where we went around proving to winemakers in sommelier around the world and wine critics and wine writers that Coravin worked. We would gather them together in whatever city or winemaking region with their wines. They would Coravin half of the bottles of a case. We would come back and blind taste them.

six months, one year, two years, five years even later with the Burgundians and the Napa Valley guys. And they could experience themselves the lack of an impact that Coravin had on the wine. They knew that it worked. So we did that with over 700 wine professionals, and piles of different wines all over the world.

So that was the efficacy side and we still do it. We still do blind tastings with natural wines, for example. We just did one in New York with a bunch of sommelier and a pile of natural wines, Coravin at different times. We did it with every system we launched, so sparkling and pivot as well as with timeless. But then there's the cultural resistance and

That is, the hope is that if you can convert the winemaker that the sommelier will come along. That hope was only partially realized. And the beautiful thing about it was for me personally to see how differently each culture responded to Coravin. The French are very different from the Americans.

The Australians are very different from the French and the Brits are very different from the Italians. And even within a country like the United States, for example, New York is much more conservative than San Francisco or Los Angeles. And so you got to see, for example, in Napa Valley, people accepted it right away, super fast. New York, much more conservative. Australia.

one of our best countries. They don't have a tradition they're not willing to break. So they were like, great, we could drink by the glass. This is awesome. France, Paris, extremely conservative. Bordeaux, very conservative. Burgundy, wide open. Like excited to try something new. Wonderful. Champagne, very much like Burgundy. They accepted Coravin sparkling very, very quickly. So

You know, to overcome that cultural resistance, honestly, it's the culture determines how much work you have to put into it. And then it's really time. Coravin had to survive, right? We had to survive on the Australia, on the United Kingdom, on Burgundy, on California in order to give places like New York and Paris and Bordeaux time to adapt.

I don't know that you can push a culture, but you can convince them it works, that changing of behavior was the hardest part and the most challenging and fun part of the whole experience.

Kristi Mayfield (11:01)
hadn't thought about just the cultural differences and embracing the technology from culture by culture. In my mind, one of the, I'll call it a cultural difference that I can see being a different perspective. And I'd love your thoughts on this is the on-premise or, or say restaurant culture, whether or not they're embracing it as quickly versus we talked a lot upfront.

you being a consumer, me being a consumer and where this can fit into our wine journey. But can you talk about that cultural difference as well from the on-premise, whether restaurants might have been slower or even faster? In a previous episode, I talked about the by the glass program.

We do see a lot of, restaurant waste and wine if only one person orders that glass of wine out of that bottle before it goes bad. But I'd love to get your perspective, especially for our listener, as to how this could potentially be a game changer in both of those scenarios.

Greg Lambrecht (12:04)
You know, I yeah, it's it is really important as we have lots of different types of customers. We've got the winemaker. We've got distributors and importers. We've got the consumer at home. have wine educators who use Coravin and then there is the trade. I restaurants and wine bars. I was convinced that restaurants and wine bars would pick it up so fast because the benefit to them is so economically clear not only eliminating waste.

But when you eliminate waste, you also open up the opportunity to sell a better glass of wine. So instead of putting a, you know, $12 wholesale bottle of wine on your by the glass list because you're willing to throw it out. If it goes bad, you can serve. mean, we have people serve a thousand euro glass of wine in Germany, for example, a glass of DRC domain, Romany Conti or, or whatever. Right.

I thought it was so obvious and for some it was. Joe Bastianich very early on with Del Posto was very quick. A lot of restaurants in California were very quick, but it was very much like that cultural thing. believe that most restaurants are founded around a chef and that chef's dream of what they want their restaurant to be. And the

very little business education goes on in the Court Of Master sommeliers until recently. There was a lot of art appreciation approach to wine service and wine lists. But there's an economic impact. Beverage is where restaurants make all their money. And by the glass is 50 % of the wine sales in terms of revenue. So it's a really important part of the business.

I was shocked to find how little economic and business education there was in restaurants. And as a result, the resistance was identical to the cultural resistance. So New York was much more conservative than California in the restaurant. Italy was wide open. We're in so many restaurants in Italy. They got it very quickly. But France, much more conservative. Australia, we're in every restaurant.

So there's very much a cultural difference. The one place where the economics was understood very quickly were chain restaurants. So for example, the United States, Capital Grill. Capital Grill adopted Coravin wholesale across the entire business because they saw the economic impact. We've taken to doing...

tests with restaurants now as a concerted effort to convince people by studying their wine sales before we put Coravin in, put Coravin in, study their wine sales after. And the impact on revenue is dramatic. We just try to convince them to put five glasses they would not put on their by the glass list, on their by the glass using Coravin, either because they feared people wouldn't understand it or the price was too high from their perspective on the by the glass.

And what they've seen is waste plummet and revenue go up. And I think ultimately customer is happier because they have access to better wines by the glass. They don't have to get a bad wine by the glass or pay too much for a bottle that they're not going to finish. So from a customer choice perspective, I'm hoping that battle wins out.

we're seeing more and more attraction in restaurants as time goes on.

Kristi Mayfield (15:14)
the trajectory that Coravin is on in that regard is very game changing to me. I know personally when a new restaurant opens I go to their website and I look at their wine list. Now call me a wine snob, but that's what I do. And I get excited about something, but then I see it's only by the bottle. And

A lot of times that's great, but when my husband and I are on different spectrums and I want a white wine, he wants a red wine, it does seem limiting because a lot of our by the glass programs aren't nearly as exciting as the by the bottle. So adopting as a restaurateur, a Coravin program, and even if it's a rotating few glasses,

What I'm hearing you say is that is really driving not only customer response in a positive way, it's driving bottom line profitability in a really significant way.

Greg Lambrecht (16:11)
Absolutely. Every restaurant where we've tested this, and think we're up to 16 to 20 restaurants around the world that we've done this test, every single one has seen a dramatic increase in their revenue. I equate that to customer happiness and customer satisfaction. People are buying a great glass. They know it's in good shape because they see it on the Coravin by the Glass list. And it's a wine they would not have otherwise been able to access.

under a normal by the glass list without Coravin And that is particularly true now with sparkling. Restaurants were loathe to serve more than one or two sparkling wines by the glass because they not only oxidize, they go flat. And every customer can tell a flat glass and they don't want to pay a lot of money for a flat glass of champagne. But everybody wants a great glass of champagne, particularly as a first glass, the

ease of use and the clarity of need with sparkling wine in restaurants has really been a big door opener for Coravin in general. When I pitch to a restaurant, say, okay, so here's Coravin sparkling and you can now serve any champagne you want by the glass. And by the way, there's this thing called timeless and pivot that can serve your still wines by the glass. that freedom, I am the same as you. I look at the by the glass list and the wine list at every restaurant before I go.

Because it matters to me, right? And then to have the freedom to be able to pair different glasses with different courses without having to finish the first bottle before you go to the second bottle, right? That's something as I get older, I do less and less and I'd much rather go by the glass.

Kristi Mayfield (17:47)
taking that same concept from a wine enthusiast or consumer perspective, how do you help, let's say you are a listener, how can Coravin be part of your journey? One, looking at just the trends in lower consumption. Two, we are seeing

the statistics telling us that people are investing more when they do buy a bottle of wine. So we're seeing that price elevation towards and I don't want to equate price and quality, but they're investing more in a bottle of wine. And then to the point of that fear or the anxiety around popping the cork because you don't want to drink at all. And if you come back to it three days later, it's not the same experience. But at the same time,

When you just take the price tag of a Coravin, you say, gosh, am I going to get my value out of it? Greg, what would you say to our listener who may have had that experience around the product?

Greg Lambrecht (18:49)
Yeah, well, I think about the cost of the system. It's a one-time investment plus the gas. The gas, if you use it appropriately and timeless, you're paying 25 cents a glass, 30 cents a glass. So winds up being relatively inexpensive to use and go to our website to see how to use it most efficiently. So it's a one-time investment. What does that investment bring? It's not the wine that you don't throw away. A lot of people think about Coravin as a wine preservation system. I don't think of it that way.

I think of it as a freedom, the freedom that you have to taste and drink whatever you want in the quantity you want. That freedom is the value of Coravin. And when I think about, I had a really good friend who said, I use Coravin all the time. I said, what do you use it on? He goes, well, I used to think that there are very few days that are worth opening this bottle of wine. Like this is a great bottle of wine. There are very few days where I'm like,

Today is the perfect day to commit to this bottle. he goes, every day is worth a great glass. And a great glass might mean an expensive bottle of wine. It might mean a rare bottle of wine. It might mean an older bottle of wine. It might mean a bottle of wine that you purchased with your spouse on a trip and you just want to try a taste.

Every day is worth a great glass of wine. And I think that also comes with drinking more intentionally. If you're going to be drinking a glass of wine, it might as well be the perfect wine. More and more, what I'm doing at home, my wonderful spouse, Jennifer, she's an expert in Italian wines, more and more what I do at home is I will, she'll be cooking and I'm her sommelier. And so I'm going through five different barolos

Kristi Mayfield (20:05)
Mm-hmm.

Greg Lambrecht (20:25)
or five different Barbarescos or five different Sicilian wines and tasting her on them and she'll go, that one, that's the one that we have with dinner. Let's have a glass. Each of us have a glass of that. And that ability, that perfects that experience. There's such an infinite palette of wines in terms of smells and tastes. If you think about it as an artist, the ability to

freely explore it to make sure that every glass you have is exactly what it is that you want and you're drinking intentionally and you know you're not drinking more than you want to because the bottles open all of those things are possible once you separate the volume they sell it to you from the volume you consume that that's the freedom that i really promote with Coravin

It's the thing that got me so fired up about this prototype when I made it, you know, 24 years ago, tested it for 12 years before starting a company. By the time I started Coravin, my life had completely changed. I thought about wine so differently than my friends because it didn't matter anymore. I am a big fan of this movement toward drinking less with better. And that comes from

being able to find that perfect wine for you, for a friend, and they can be different, or a spouse. Right? Jen can have a different wine than I do. She might want a white burgundy and I might want a Riesling, right? And we have that freedom and there's no compromise, there's no arguing.

Kristi Mayfield (21:50)
So you have changed, my mindset. for our listener, you can look at Coravin no longer as a product. I liked your framing or reframing that it's not a wine preserver either. And it feels, and I hear you saying that it enables this completely different philosophy around

wine enjoyment, having that perfect glass at the perfect moment and not losing anything because you chose to do so. And I love to frame out what I've heard are some of the pillars. One being that sustainability element and the elimination of waste. for me,

doesn't happen a lot because I compelled to finish the glass or finish the bottle even if I'm ready for bed, but I just don't want it to go bad because it was so delicious. And so that environmental waste gives me anxiety. from a point of transitioning your mindset around using Coravin.

Greg Lambrecht (22:40)
Ruff.

Kristi Mayfield (22:58)
Are there any key points around that sustainability that you've gotten feedback on or that you are encouraging potential consumers to make that Mindset shift.

Greg Lambrecht (23:10)
absolutely. And we think about sustainability a lot. The first CEO of ⁓ Coravin, I'm founder, I'm chairman of the board, but I'm not CEO and I haven't been because I'm a medical device guy. The first CEO was the CEO of Keurig. And when you think about Keurig, they, you know, they can go to the moon and back six or seven times with the unrecyclable plastic.

And so we thought very hard about sustainability from the beginning. And we minimize our carbon footprint in a bunch of different ways, because I think that is really important to this planet. And wine is such a natural product. been with us forever. And you would think that grapevines are pulling carbon out of the air. And so it's got to be net positive. The reality is that making the wine, using barrels, doing everything they do in the winery to make it as great as it is,

then bottling it, labeling and enclosure, then shipping it. Largest part of the carbon footprint of wine is the shipping of it, which is not insignificant because it's a temperature controlled product. It's important to keep it cool. So shipping also is using electricity and whatever it is to transport. And then, you know, keeping it cold and then you pull the cork, you drink half the bottle and you're either drinking the other half because you have to or you throw it out. Imagine all that work.

to get that bottle to you. And then you're throwing away half of the work for nothing or cooking with it, right? And so I think Coravin certainly helps in that in terms of waste reduction. The other part is our capsules are recyclable. So they're valuable metal, put them in your recycling stream. That's important. The other thing that came out of medical devices was the durability of Coravin. There's a wonderful test that I learned about in medicine called Six Feet onto Concrete. And it's a military spec.

where you take the product and drop it from six feet onto concrete and it's got to survive. And so we made Coravin to survive the restaurant world. And one of the ways we reduce our carbon footprint is by having it not fail. Our return rate on Coravin is sub 1%. So it's a really important thing that we've done a lot of, put a lot of thought into. The whole, how would we net contribute to sustainability using?

Kristi Mayfield (25:11)
hadn't thought about the just the sheer breakage and your return rates are very impressive at less than a percent. So shifting gears to the second pillar, ⁓ I personally think Coravin can inspire is I'm passionate about getting the younger generation to rethink wine. And one of the reasons I believe it's a struggle is they are

they've grown up in an arena where everything is in that single serving size, whether it's a seltzer or a can of beer or going to a bar or a club and getting a single cocktail. None of those translates to this 750 milliliter five glass bottle of wine. Are you seeing Coravin or is one of the goals and maybe future development areas of Coravin?

to bring a product or to bring them into your customer group because of the ability to drink less and have that single serving size by using a Coravin.

Greg Lambrecht (26:17)
think so. I've got two sons, 26 and 29, and they grew up with Coravin. So they both have wine fridges and Coravin's. So they're not a good test sample. But one of the things that I do see them do is they bring out wines to their friends. They have a pile of wine glasses. They put a bunch of bottles on the table. They teach them how to use Coravin. And they're like, go explore. And I think that

that freedom really helps. Wine is intimidating because of its variety. There's 140,000 different wines bottled every year and prices go from anything from $1.50 to $2 for a bottle up to $10,000 per bottle. And so how do you learn about something that is so impenetrable?

One of the ways is, you know, start as at an expensive wine, go find a great wine store and with a person that you like and trust, find a wine that you love and don't stop there. If you love a wine, go back to that same wine store and say, I love this. What else do you have that's like this? That's different. And explore wine. It's meant to be explored and it's a lifetime of joy when you do. There are some huge unlocks left in the world of wine. You're right.

everything else is single serve. And wine is hampered by this. other alternative formats for wine, whether it's,

Bag and box, Tetra Pak, cans, all fail faster. They're not designed for long-term aging. if you could solve single serve wine,

inexpensive packaging, long duration shelf life, single serve, worked with every kind of wine. It would be huge. We're we've taken a crack at it with something that we call Vinitas, but that's still using glass and a normal closure. I would love to I my dream is to go to a wine store, talk to that same person that's advising you on the wine and have them say, buy six cans of these.

six different wines, single serve. I know that would damage my Coravin sales, but I'm always looking to eliminate myself. what a joy that would be how quickly you could learn about Burgundy, right? How quickly you could learn about Cabernet from around the world if you could buy it in single serve.

Kristi Mayfield (28:24)
I agree. And I get asked all the time, especially when I am telling friends, hey, we're going here. Obviously a bottle of wine isn't necessarily going to be the right thing to drink. So we don't have to give up wine altogether. We just have to find it in a different, more transportable or environmentally friendly packaging because breaking glass at the swimming pool is not a good thing. But their immediate answer is always

there aren't any good wines in a can and I say, yes, there are. But it's definitely going back to what we talked about earlier, that cultural shift instead of pulling a cork using a Coravin, well, instead of buying a bottle, buy a can. It's a big one. Well, the last pillar, you've touched on this several times today, Greg, is that pillar around empowerment.

as you're talking to somebody who's maybe never heard of Coravin, which I don't know how many of those people are out there, but there are there probably still some. But can you share how you would encourage any wine lover to leverage Coravin not as a gadget, but really as the perfect tool for gaining more value, personal experience out of their wine cellar if they have

five bottles, six bottles, or if they have 5,000 bottles.

Greg Lambrecht (29:43)
Yeah, I always, I think about it in two ways. One is, if you're learning about wine, it's the fastest way to learn. Because now you can taste six different wines side by side like you're at a wine show. If you own six bottles of six different Chardonnay, you can try all six side by side. And there's nothing like tasting side by side to learn what it is that makes that a California Chardonnay, an Oregon Chardonnay, a Burgundy, an Australian.

And then within each of these regions, the different types of wines that are there. So I think from an exploration learning standpoint, Coravin is a wonderful tool to use to learn. And we get a lot of letters from people that have become masters sommeliers or masters of wine thanking us for Coravin. We tip the scales in Cambridge University against Oxford in their blind wine tasting competition. We gave a bunch of Coravin to Cambridge. I don't know why I chose them on their side, but they've been winning of late, which is great.

So you can learn and study and explore wine more freely. And then the other one is if you already know a lot about wine and you have all of these different wines, it's that freedom to have perfection, really. Your perfect wine for that evening, that moment. And your spouse can have a different one. And your friend can have a different one. So you're able to sort of show up. People always say,

Is Coravin a solo device, something that is used by people that are not sharers, right? And I say, no, you know, it allows you to share more. Your guest comes over, you've got a great wine cellar. Don't serve them one bottle of wine. Serve them five different wines. Show them this incredible world that wine is. You have this library. You can let them read any book, right? You can pour them a

bunch of different wines for them to explore and experience. And in the end, one of the wonderful things about wine is that olfactory smell, taste thing, and it's linkage to memory. And I believe that just at a great restaurant, if you're a wine collector and you've got a great seller, you have the ability to create an unforgettable moment for a friend, a guest, your spouse.

and yourself you a variety of different tastes in wines the same time. And that leads to this memory and this linkage of this great wine with this great experience, which is what wine's all about. So I think if you're new to wine, use Coravin as a tool to explore. If you're deep into wine, use it as a means of

basically showing your seller to other people, including yourself.

Kristi Mayfield (32:15)
I think the idea of, I love teaching people, don't just grab a bottle of Chardonnay. That gives you a singular frame of reference. Just as you mentioned, Greg, the concept of the Coravin allowing, whether you're just a wine enthusiast wanting to hone in on the perfect style of Chardonnay for you, or if you're studying to gain a certification, it's very,

daunting and almost impossible to want to sit down and pick three bottles of Chardonnay, a Burgundy, a Napa, and an Australian, and taste them side by side. You've allowed that experience to happen because the Coravin allows you to put those bottles right back where they were, no harm, no foul, and have that side by side tasting experience. So it's allowing you not only to be more

deliberate in how you're tasting wines, be more adventurous if you're doing that because you're not really certain or you want to explore a new region versus the one that you always go to. If you always go to Napa, this allows you to potentially do a Napa beside some place you never would have purchased a Chardonnay, maybe Northern Italy. Or create those flights, as you mentioned, and have a five-course meal and have a five-course wine flight that's perfectly paired.

rather than saving those bottles just for a special occasion. Or in my case, often I've saved them too long and they're no longer as magical as they might have been if I just would have used a Coravin five years ago.

Greg Lambrecht (33:50)
You know, it's that there's so much to learn in wine and I think that's what makes it intimidating. If there's a way that Coravin can be used to pull that down and get rid of that intimidation and liberate the person to freely explore and learn on their own at their own pace with the wines they got. My advice to friends when they're new to wine is don't go to a wine store and buy one bottle. Go to a wine store and buy three.

you know, then have a corvina and taste them side by side and learn, I like this one better than this one because of this. And then as soon as you know the because of this, you can go back to that wine store and say, I like this in a wine. Do you have others that are like that have that, that feature?

I, mean, honestly, I'm still learning, but I'm not intimidated anymore by that learning. I don't have waste.

The only waste I have is what do do with a bottle of Coravin bottle that you don't like?

And you know, and I'm trying to be honest with people saying, I personally don't like this wine, but I want you to try it.

Kristi Mayfield (34:46)
beauty of wine, what I like, you might not like and vice versa. And it doesn't mean that it's a bad wine. That's what I tell people all the time. It doesn't mean that it's a bad wine. It just means it's not your style or your spouse's or your best friend's style. So you shouldn't make your judgments based upon someone else's perspective. And the beauty of it is in the world of popping a cork, if you didn't like it, it would just sit and go bad.

in the beauty of a Coravin world, you can give that to someone else and give that wine a second opportunity to be somebody's new favorite wine.

Greg Lambrecht (35:24)
it. It's,

cilantro is not a bad spice, it's just not everybody likes it. Right? I mean, I love cilantro, I know people who hate cilantro, and so it's the same with wine. Very personal, don't let anyone tell you that a wine is great, and don't let anyone tell you a wine is bad. If you like it, it's good.

Kristi Mayfield (35:40)
whether it's $5 or 500, that's what I tell people all the time. So Greg, looking forward, are there any trends or any initiatives on the forefront that are a focus area for you at Coravin that might change the game in a different way?

Greg Lambrecht (35:41)
That's it.

There are certainly trends. Wine consumption is falling and alcohol consumption is falling and falling fast around the world. I work in healthcare. I recognize that

excessive consumption of wine certainly can lead to health problems, I believe that people are going to continue to shift toward drinking less but better, drinking what's better, what you love, but only drinking the amount of it that you want.

not the volume of sale. I think the other thing that's happening is, I hope, we're reaching a peak in terms of pricing. Like the prices are so high for so many wines, and they've gone up and up and up and and that's just not sustainable. And it certainly is going to scare away the younger generation, right? And that is not a survivable business model. So...

I'm hoping that wine prices peak and maybe even come down a bit, although tariffs in the United States are going to make that tough. So I see a continued either leveling or slight decline in wine going on, and I'm hoping the price comes down a little bit. what that's meant for Coravin is we're sort of riding a wave that is pointed in our direction, or we're going with. Our sales are up.

even the wine consumption is down. And I think that's because by the glass is increasing. It's going to mean a lot to the wineries. I worry for them because there's going to be a lot. There's a lot of inventory sitting around if they're not selling and the prices are too high and the consumption is going down. they're really in a bit of a bind. what is Coravin going to do as a result of this? Less but better?

I want available everywhere and I want less but better available not only in your home or in the restaurant through a Coravin system, but I want it available at retail. Why do you have to commit to a full bottle of wine before you know whether or not you like it? it would be great if two things happened. One, that wine retailers that still have a physical footprint ⁓ taste people on wine.

Kristi Mayfield (37:51)
Mm-hmm.

Greg Lambrecht (37:54)
more and better wine before they have to buy. if they're, Total Wine and Spirits of the United States does use Coravin quite a bit to taste people on wine Harrods in London uses Coravin to taste people on wine before they buy. That is the ultimate experience to be able to taste through four or five different wines you're thinking about buying and then saying, okay, I'm gonna buy that one and that one and this one, because I really like those. Now you know.

Right? So I want to see more use of Coravin in the wine store. It's the only reason to go to a wine store is to talk to somebody knowledgeable or taste something to find out whether you like it. The other thing I'd like to see is more alternative formats that work effectively and that do sell in single serve, higher quality wines. I think that's going to take the generation of a new container. That's a lot of hard work. I'm either we're going to be part of that hard work or somebody else will solve it.

if there was a shelf stable by the glass, long shelf life, not interfering with the quality of the beverage container that was rapidly recyclable, I would love it.

Because I think it's going to get more people to consider wine as if they're drinking alcohol, it's the right alcohol. It's the experience they want to have. I love this industry and I love this beverage. And so I want to see it survive in an environment where overall consumption is going down and prices are too high. How do we fractionalize the cost of the price into by the glass in something that's delicious in a single serve container? I would love to see us be part of that. And then there's

10 or 15 other things that I would love to do with Coravin. You'll be seeing more and more in coming years.

Kristi Mayfield (39:19)
excited to see what's coming in in the coming years. kind of to wrap up Greg, there's a few new elements of Coravin in my mind that you've solidified for our listener to consider. One is the exploration element. This device Coravin allows you without the risk of all these bottles going bad or the fear or anxiety over having to finish each bottle to

have a much broader experience either every day a little bit every day or if you really want to taste across multiple bottles you can now do that very very easily. It also opens the door for more interesting by the glass programs both at restaurants and wine bars and to your point I think the element I hadn't really even thought about

was going more into and encouraging wine shops to leverage Coravin to give customers a potential exploration in store before making that significant commitment, especially if they're newer to wine and really have no idea where they want to go, dropping 30 or $40 on a bottle and discovering you don't like it at all.

is not going to encourage people to continue to explore within the, what'd you say, 140,000 different bottles globally of wines available. So those are some key pillars for Coravin I hadn't really thought about. And I'm also completely shifting away from Coravin as a preservation into Coravin is enabling this whole new world of wine exploration beyond

with a single bottle and that single cork is king mentality.

Greg Lambrecht (41:09)
Yeah, that's my hope. When I founded Coravin, I had that freedom.

already. didn't need to found the company to solve my problem. I wanted as an inventor, an entrepreneur to get to provide that freedom to as many others as possible. I believe wine contributes substantially to quality of life. It really does exactly what you said to come home and relax with a great glass. That is part of the joy of life. Connecting a smell with an experience that is part of the joy of life and how memories are created.

in a restaurant, in that home. My dream was providing that freedom to as many people as possible. And I, part of the reason I evangelize about Coravin is not because I want to interfere with the culture of pulling a cork, which we still do, even at Coravin. It's to add to that culture. You can still pull corks. Now you can also do this.

It's in addition, not in replacement. So it adds to your overall wine experience. You already have your wine experience that you're familiar with. How do you expand that experience with a new tool that gives you this freedom?

my CEO looked at me recently, Dave, Dave's wonderful. And he said, you know, we're serving more than a glass a second through a Coravin, every second of every day. There's about a million people every 10 days that experience Coravin glass. And if you think about all of those moments that we've hopefully contributed to ⁓ in a positive way.

for at least one person in that situation, if not multiple, that's the reason you found a company and could not be happier with the outcome. And I think people have come to understand that it's not just preservation, it's this freedom.

Kristi Mayfield (42:49)
And wrapping it up, when you brought it down to, would you say 25, 30 cents a glass on the economic side? That's game changing math in my book because I would spend 25, 30 a dollar or more to be able to open some of the bottles I've been saving.

and to share those experiences not only with my spouse, but also with friends. Well, this has been such an educational discussion. I've learned so much. I now can think of a lot of different ways that I want to get that Coravin

tool, improving my wine experience. And for our listeners, I hope this is giving you some great ways to expand your journey without feeling like every single time you have to pop the cork and consume that full bottle. So Greg, this has been just really, really valuable.

Greg Lambrecht (43:44)
Thank you, Kristi really appreciate it. Cheers and drink and good health.

Kristi Mayfield (43:47)
I learned so much from Greg today and you can learn more at Coravin.com. I've put the link in the show notes, but my biggest takeaway is those special bottles I've been saving are not doing me any good just sitting there and neither are yours. The best occasion is to drink it tonight, even if it's just for a taste or a glass.

I'd love for you to share your experiences either with that bottle that got away or how you are leveraging your Coravin to transform your own wine experiences. So go to Instagram and follow me at Kristi Everyday Sommelier. That's K-R-I-S-T-I Everyday Sommelier. And DM me or tag me in a post with your favorite bottle of wine you've been saving and how

Coravin transformed your experience. And if you want to take the next step and further get involved with the WIne WIze and Everyday Sommelier community, go to my website at wine-wize w-i-z-e.com and make sure you sign up for the Insiders List. Now, in our next episode, we are covering a mystery. We are solving crimes and we are diving into counterfeit wines.

What are they? And how do you know you're buying the real deal? Until then, grab a glass of your favorite wine and continue to learn wine your way.