TheWineCommander

A Coravin opener stops wine from being exposed to air and therefore retains its freshness and character. The system pierces the cork (or via a special screw top) with a thin hollow needle. You press a trigger which forces the wine out through the needle into your glass and at the same time replaces it with argon gas.
The idea is you can enjoy any wine without committing to drink the whole bottle. It is claimed that the bottle will last up to three months although I have heard that six weeks is more likely (depending on ullage) before the wine begins to lose its brightness and flatten out.
If you are at home and only drink a glass or two each night then this may appeal because you can go back to the bottle (or bottles) as you please over at least a 6 week period. Not my bag as I like to finish the bottle within a maximum of one or two nights! Certainly ideal for the restaurant trade which can serve very expensive bottles by the glass without you paying for the bottle. It should appeal to wine bars who could have most of their wines on the wine list available by the glass, using the Coravin  system.
For screw top enclosures it is a slightly different ball game. First you need one of two sizes of special Coravin plastic screw caps. You remove the enclosure on the bottle and replace it with  the Coravin version which has a hollow silicone rubber centre. You put this over the top of the bottle to replace the original cap. You then access the wine as I have described above via the needle through the squishy, highly flexible rubber seal.  By the way it will not work with champagne closures.
Now the crunch. Is this all really worth it for the home consumer? The cost of the basic unit ranges from $339 to $549. Each glass you pour will cost approx $1.33 of argon. Argon refill canisters cost $30 for a two pack. Refill canisters are good for about 15, 150 ml   glasses. But theres more. The plastic Coravin screw tops of either size come in a 6 pack for about $45.

My advice. Take the cheap option. Open a bottle and share it with your partner or friends.

A 52 year old tanker driver has been arrested after allegedly siphoning off several thousand litres of wine into a basement on his parents’ property near Carcassonne, south west France.
Following a call-out to an altercation two kilometres east of Carcassonne, police found two men fighting in front of a 28,000L (litre) wine tanker parked outside a house with a 30m flexible pipe running from the tanker’s valves into the basement of the house’s garage.
One of the men, from a tanker company based in Montredon-des-Corbières, near Narbonne, more than 60km further east, had confronted one of his drivers outside the house of the driver’s parents.
According to regional newspaper L’Independant,  he had suspected the driver of appropriating hundreds of litres of wine over the course of several months, or possibly years.
Further investigation  found a series of 20L buckets full of wine stored in the basement, plus around 100 buckets hidden outside the garage and more arranged under a tarpaulin on the back of a truck.
The tanker itself was believed to have been topped up with water, the newspaper reported.
Meanwhile Barossa Valley winemaker Trevor Jones has confessed to deliberately destroying 27,000 litres valued at $60,000 of a rival company’s shiraz and chardonnay.
He opened the taps on four tanks of wine at Kellermeister Wines at Lyndoch in February 2015. He faces up to 10 years imprisonment. He will be sentenced next month.