Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/348953
{ SOMMjournal.com } 67 REMEMBER THE FIRST BOTTLE OF WINE THAT MADE your eyes widen, your spine and the stars align, and an uncork- able, "Oh, wow!" pass your lips? That precise moment when you tasted something so beautiful and unique and fleeting, it made you understand what all the fuss was about? That's exactly the feeling that made Wine Director Thomas Pastuszak put more than 30 bottles of rarefied, collectible juice in his by-the-glass program at The NoMad Hotel in New York City. Risky? At one time, yes. But after an interlude with wine-accessing technology, the Coravin system, Pastuszak realized he could become the pied piper of "a-ha!" moments for Millennial wine drinkers. Pastuszak, 29, knows a thing or two about the young sippers he's targeting. He was recently voted one of Forbes "30 Under 30" to watch in the world of food and wine. "My first bottle I tasted that had been accessed through Coravin was delicious and very fresh—it tasted fantastic!" says Pastuszak. "And then I was told that this particular bottle had been open for six months—but it tasted as if I just opened the bottle." Looking more like a high-tech wine key than the bulky C02- pushing wine-preservation units that have come online over the last decade, Coravin was invented by medical-device engineer and wine lover Greg Lambrecht, who found himself less eager to open some of his more precious picks while his wife was pregnant. After all, who wants to crack an '82 Margaux all by his lonesome, only to let the leftovers oxidize? Perish the thought but not the wine, reasoned Lambrecht. The system, as many now know, inserts a fine, hollow needle into any given bottle without removing the foil, releasing a bit of Argon gas to pressurize and keep oxygen at bay, and then pouring out however much you want. When you want to "access" (a term, Pastuszak reasons, better-suited to the technology than preserve) another bottle, you just remove the Coravin and the cork naturally re-seals itself because the puncture was slender and minimal. For Pastuszak, it was revelation—and one that allowed him to give a taste of something special to younger consumers who might not know where to begin sussing out special bottles. "You can access one bottle after another, after another, after another . . . which makes it great from a service standpoint," he says of his hands-on year embracing the technology. "I can pour a glass of white from one bottle and then pull the device out and move on to a red within seconds. I don't need to do any sort of complicated set up or break down. It's great for use tableside." He tried the product weeks after its July 2013 launch, and immediately began putting his best wines in rotation by the glass. "We decided to set up a program where we access really, really expensive, very high-end bottles to give people that experience of a very, very fine wine but in a by-the-glass setting," he said, not - ing they are able to access the same bottle multiple times over weeks if not months. "I've never seen any degradation of quality." To understand the magnitude of that statement is to know some of the bottles he is introducing to the uninitiated and affording a peek deep into a connoisseur's wine cellar: a 1986 Barbaresco from Produttori del Barbaresco; 1993 Georges de Vogüé Chambolle-Musigny; 1999 Sauternes from Château d'Yquem; 2006 Bonneau du Martray Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru. It's an experience that can be utterly life-changing, and Pastuszak would know; his own first revelatory wine moment set him on the path he's taken today, thanks to a collector friend who introduced him to a ten-year-old "very good" Bordeaux. "I remember smelling it and tasting it and thinking, Wow, I've never had a wine experience like this. It was an 'a-ha' moment for me," he says, grinning at the memory. "And that was very, very special because it pushed me into wanting to learn more about wine. I want to get as many people to have that 'a-ha' moment as possible." Thomas Pastuszak, Wine Director for The NoMad in New York City, uses the Coravin to serve rare bottles at the hotel's Rooftop dining space. Access AT THE NOMAD, CORAVIN OFFERS THE KEYS TO THE CELLAR, ONE GLASS AT A TIME by Amy Zavatto / photos by Erica Gannett