Sydney to host pop-up clinic for tasting treasured wines without opening them

On 27 August, Sydney will host the world’s first ‘Coravin Aged Wine Clinic’, allowing wine enthusiasts to taste their most prized vintages “without ever removing the cork or interrupting the aging process”. Held at Grappa, The Rocks, organisers say the clinic will offer the “rare opportunity” for ticket holders to conduct a ‘health-check’ of the bottle they have always wanted to open, guided by Master of Wine Andrea Pritzker. Each bookable 15-minute consultation invites wine lovers and collectors to bring one special bottle from home to be expertly assessed. Andrea Pritzker MW will use Coravin’s ‘Timeless By-the-Glass System’, fitted with the ‘Coravin Vintage Needle’, which has been “specifically engineered to pass safely through old and fragile corks without damaging them”, to extract two small tasting serves. As the wine is poured, the system replaces it with Argon, a neutral gas widely used in the winemaking process. Upon removal, the cork “naturally reseals itself, allowing the remaining wine to continue its ageing journey completely undisturbed”.