September 21, 2023 • 47 mins
The best inventions are those which solve everyday problems. For Greg Lambrecht, a fine wine enthusiast and founder of Coravin, it was how to preserve an open bottle of wine to enjoy later. A practicing physician and researcher, Lambrecht is a prolific inventor with more than 200 patents for breakthrough medical devices. He spent eight years devising and testing 15 wine preservation protypes and asked sommeliers around the to test them. The first Coravin was launched in July 2013.
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FORCY Radio. Welcome to the ConnectedTable Live. We're your hosts, Melanie
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Young and David Ransom. Your insay, She'll be curious culinary couple. We
enjoy bringing you the dynamic people whowork front and center and behind the scenes
in wine, food, spirits andhospitality around the world. We love traveling
and sharing their stories and our discoverieswith you. And you're listening live,
but you can hear all our showson over thirty five channels, including the
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Big Ones, Eheart, Spotify,Apple, you name it, and we
hope you follow us on the ConnectedTable at Instagram and our blog. Our
guest today he is like a seriousinventor. He has over a hundred patents.
This is a little bit of adetour from what we normally do on
the Connected Table, which is talkabout wine or food or places we've been.
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This is talking about a product,but it's a product that we came
in touch with a couple of monthsago, really for the first time,
and really got to experience it withthe inventor and so that's why we have
him on our show today well,and also his story it aligns with what
the Connected Table is all about,which is interviewing people who are founders and
leaders and doing things that make along term impact on the industry. And
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when we had sat down and haddinner with him in New York and Lapavion
restaurant shout out to Daniel Blue,we found me quite personable and really not
geeky, and he is a greatbackstory. So I'm gonna set this up.
We're with Greg Lambrecht, an inventor, as we said, and founder
and board member of Corvan, Inc. A global wine technology company that really
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empowers wine lovers to try new winesor save were special bottles over time.
So it's a type of wine preservation. And we'd actually tried some of the
older vintages against newer vintages that hadbeen with Corvan and it was really very
hard to tell the difference, right, it was actually and we were pretty
flabbrigasted by that because everybody's a skepticwhen they don't know what the product is.
But you know, this has reallybeen a game changer in the wine
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industry because we've all had that bottlethat we wanted a glass of but we
didn't know what to do with atthe end of the night, hoping that
it would be good the next day. This changes that dynamic and that's really
how Greg's story started in wine.But just let's take it back. It's
not just about wine with Greg.He's also this is pretty amazing. He's
like a nuclear scientist, medical doctor, slash inventor, entrepreneur. Okay,
I'll world into one. He isalso the founder and executive director of Intrinsic
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Therapeutics, which is a venture backedmedical device company focusing on addressing the needs
of patients with spinal disorders. Well, I you know, says I have
a health and wellness background. Thatjust hit a lot of hot buttons to
me, because he helps a lotof people and there's a backstory to that.
He also works with Viacre, anothermedical device company in Boston, Worries
Bace. So this is a guythat's like running medical companies, over one
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hundred patents, and he has aseveral headquarters in Asia, Europe and the
United States for Corvan, which isnow available in sixty countries and in fine
restaurants and wine bars, et cetera, and homes around the world. Really
fascinating man. So, who arereally happy that you're taking the time out
of what's clearly your busy schedule,Gregg to join us on the connected table.
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Oh thanks for having me. You'rereminding me of that wonderful evening with
Daniel Blues Restaurant and the paton thelongest online tasting I've ever done with previously
Corban models, and I'm glad thatyou guys were there. And it was
shocking even to me. I didn'treally design Corbin too. Have Wine's last
eighteen nineteen years post Corvin that wasthat was crazy and wonderful experience. It
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was really eye opening for us aswell. I mean, we had heard
about Corvin, but we really hadn'tgotten a close personal with it and enabled
us to do that. But moreimportantly, we got to know you,
so we like to start our showswith our guests backstory down to this.
Please share with our listeners where wereyou born in raised You have a very
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interesting family background. Yeah, I'ma first generation American. My parents are
from Germany and Austria. I wasborn in New York City Lennox Hill Hospital,
where my spinaling plants currently for saleand being implanted. Kind of come
full circle. I spent from zeroto eleven in Manhattan on Gramercy Park and
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then moved out to southern California.Went to high school in Corona del Mar,
which is right next to Newport Beach, somewhere between San Diego and Los
Angeles. How to surf, learnedhow to drive, fell in love with
the sun, which in Manhattan Ionly saw as it passed through my street
for a couple of minutes, andthen I got interested in physics, got
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interested in nuclear physics. I washoping that we could get off of fossil
fuels and that we could find abetter way to make energy, and so
I was fascinated by fusion power,where they where we'd fuse hydrogen atoms together
to make helium and it's really aclean form of energy that the Sun uses,
and we were hoping we could doit here on Earth. And so
I went to MIT, where theywere one of the leaders in fusion power,
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and studied that for four years,and then went off to Japan to
try to actually design and build thenext fusion reactor. Lived in Kobe for
a year and a half two yearsworking from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and realized
that fusion wasn't gonna work, thatit would never be cheaper than pulling black
stuff out of the ground or nowluckily taking the exhaust of fusion out of
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the sky as the Sun hits ourplanet and solar power, which is just
a better solution into medicine. Cameback to the United States and went into
grad school to study biomedical engineering andhave been working in that the rest of
my life. That's a field I'mvery passionate about. I love the opportunity
to sort of intersect with somebody whenthey're in a moment of medical crisis and
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their trajectory has been tipped off therise and they're headed down, and if
you can interceed at that difficult momentand try to change your trajectory back and
get them back to full health.That's that's really a wonderful way to bend
a career. So medicine has beenpart of my life since nineteen ninety three.
Oh, it was a long timeago, and yeah, I fell
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in love with it. So Iwant to bring up two people who are
family members that clearly had an impacton you. And there may be more.
But when was your grandfather and theother was your mother, and both
of them had situations, were insituations that clearly impacted some of your career
to share. Yeah, my grandfather, Herbert Wagner, was a really pre
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eminent engineer and scientist. In thenineteen hundreds, he developed one of the
first functional jet engines. He developedguided missile systems or Germany during the war.
He was captured by the Americans inforty four as part of a Project
paper Clip, where they were lookingfor scientists to bring over to the United
States. My grandfather had no lovefor the German government, and so he
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was happily captured and brought to theUS, where he worked on the sidewinder
hawk and tow missiles, anything thatyou could guide as a guided missile.
He loved and I remember when Iwas twelve years old and Newport Beach.
We were living in his house andhe came up to me and he see
him You seemed like a smart guy. There are enough weapons, work in
energy or medicine, will never haveenough of either, And he wasn't a
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man of many words, And thosefew sentences really set me on my career.
And I agree with him. Hewas right right. You know,
we have enough weapons and we'll neverhave enough medicine or energy, and if
we can solve either or both,it will lead to a better humanity.
And so I feel like I havea bit of a karmic debt to pay
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from from what he designed and developedme. Outside of the jet engine was
great, That's a good one,but uh, you know, I he
set me on my way and gaveme an emotional drive that i've I've never
I've never lost my mother. Hisdaughter suffered from being the daughter of an
autocratic Austrian family from who was bornin nineteen hundred, my grandfather, and
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so despite her intellect and brilliance andher proclivity toward physics, uh, she
was sent to a finishing school rightto almost like homec on steroids and it's
always denied the opportunity to be whatshe could have been. She's spectacularly interested
in physics and got me motivated inthat direction. But what really changed my
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life again was she suffered from lowback problems. She had herniated discs in
her early fifties and then had surgeriesand then failed surgeries, and then repeated
surgeries and then more surgeries, andshe went from being an active woman who
climbed mountains in her in her fiftiesto barely being able to walk a hundred
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yards. I always work on myown problems or my own family's problems,
so I found it intrinsic therapeutics toto try to address that, and uh,
you know, it took me alittle while, my team and I,
but now we've we've got a systemthat prevents the reoperations that she had.
We try to make the first surgeryto last on patients who have discarnations.
And so Barricade launched the United Statesin twenty twenty, like two days
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before the pandemic hit. It wasbad timing, but it's uh, it's
it's been. It's been gratifying.I was just in surgery this week in
Texas with a new surgeon I wastraining, and we were implanting a firefighter
and a pilot. And to lookat those folks, meeting them before surgery,
seeing the pain they're in, andmeeting them afterwards and seeing how much
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better they feel. You know,it's addictive. You want to keep doing
it. You know what I loveabout entrepreneurs and inventors, David, and
their soft spot is that they solveproblems. An inventor acts on his or
her ideas, and a successful entrepreneursolves a problem and fills the need.
That's the core, that's the why. Yeah, and you really have done
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that. You know. It's alwaysa team. I had a friend who
who said, an inventor comes upwith an idea, an entrepreneur uses that
idea to change the world. Andin order to change the world, and
actually it's much more fun to doit with a deep to build a team
of great people like Intrinsic Therapeutics has, like Korvin has. I was just
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we were celebrating our tenth anniversary beingon the market with Corvin. We launched
in at the end of July intwenty thirteen, and I don't think any
of us really knew what was goingto happen with Corvin. You know,
we was something that started in mybasement. I wanted a great glass of
wine. My wife didn't drink muchwine, or if she did, she
wanted something else. So one ofus was compromising. Friends came over,
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they were always asking for what's open, you know, not necessarily satisfying what
they wanted, but just willing todrink whatever we had open. And I
thought, you know what if wecould change that dynamic and pour everyone whatever
they want to drink. But Inever really realized that it would grow outside
of my basement and something that Iwanted to use to being something that is
used across the industry. You know, these ten years have been if you're
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a wine lover, which I am, I've never worked in the wine industry
to come at it in this weirdtangent of having a wine serving system that
preserves the rest of the wine indefinitely. To parlay that into meeting with wine
makers all over the world, restaurantsand suya all over the world, and
wine lovers all over the world andseeing that this beautiful culture around that surrounds
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wine is part of the quality oflife rights in medicine, we work on
extending life, and in wine wework on quality of life, and I
think they're equally important. It's somethingthat I've come to realize. The passion
that people have for their health andfor medicine, and the passion that people
have for travel on wine and thesocializing that happens around wine is very similar,
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similar intensities. Like many inventors,you actually started sharing your product,
the core of end, early prototypesof it, at least with your friends,
and everybody got hooked on it.What was the jump to where you
said I think I can do thiscommercially. Oh, there are a couple
of people that are responsible for that. I was running a medical to medical
companies at the time, and soyou know, I have a machine shop
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in my basement and I would machineimproved prototypes. That made the first one
in nineteen ninety nine, which myson named wine Mosquito, and that name
stuck more than a decade, almostattracted when I found the company founded the
company, it was called Mosquito Inkand crazy that I thought I could raise
money around that. But I madethat first prototype in ninety nine. I
made a really good prototype in twothousand and three that allowed me to change
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the different needles and gases and pressuresthat I used to push the wine out
of the bottle and never really thoughtanybody else wanted it. A friend of
mine was getting married in two thousandand four, Ryan Trant, he's a
venture capitalist investor in my company's guythat I like an enormous amount, and
so I made him one first personoutside of the house that got one,
and he was like, this isgreat. You know my friend would like
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one too, And I made anotherone, and then friends came over and
saw how I was drinking differently andthey wanted one, and their friends wanted
one. So I went from makingone every couple of years to one a
month, to one a week tofour a week. And you know,
I was accepting payment in wine people. I would just say, hey,
give me as much wine of whateverwine you think is worth this system.
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And so I started to get casesof wine, a really lovely winer,
cases of magnums from one friend ofmine as a surgeon in Oregon, and
I started to think, wow,you know people really value this. Or
when they would break, they wouldsend it back and say, you've got
to send me another one immediately,because I forgot how to drink without this
thing. And then a friend ofmine, a guy named Jeff Arnold who's
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been my adviser and friend for along time. We were at a breakfast
that we did every week on aFriday, and Jeff looked at me and
he said, I'm writing a checkfor thirty thousand dollars and we're going to
go and deposit this into a bank, and we are founding a company,
and if you choose not to doit, I will found it on my
own. I never really believed thatit would be a company, even after
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all those years of testing eleven ortwelve years of testing and making them for
friends. I just thought it wassort of a niche thing that a couple
of people wanted and loved. ButJeff, you know, basically grabbed me
by the year and pulled me tothe bank, and you know, we
raised our first round of financing withina week and took off. That was
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twenty eleven, and then we launchedin twenty thirteen, and it's been crazy.
You know, it's an interesting melanie. When we had dinner with Greg,
he actually brought a bottle that hehad originally put the core of van
in two thousand and four, nowthat's nineteen years ago. Yeah, and
we tasted from that bottle and therewas no difference. So I was floored
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by that. Yeah, it waspretty amazing. Also, you had the
mosquito and it really did look likea mosquito or a hornet or something.
Had some of the early prototypes withhim. It was great, it looked
great, It actually looked it camefrom a medical device, you know,
from someone who knows how to createmedical devices. It was really quite fascinating
to see that. And of courseyou had to trial an era R and
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D all the things you need todo that you know from your training to
get to where it clicks. AndGod bless you. You got venture capital.
A lot of people can't get pastthat part, and you seem to
have done very well with that withall of your companies. Well, first
of all, why did you callit cor Evan, what's the core apart?
Ah? Yeah, so I'm aLatin geek, and I also never
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ran Corvin a CEO. And Ihad a wonderful CEO, Nicholas Arras,
who built a curig. He wasour founding CEO. I pulled him out
of retirement when he was teaching atHarvard, and he looked at me and
he said, you know, winemosquito. Yeah, we can't call it
that that. You know, they'reannoying and they kill people. Is this?
I know, it's a sticky name. It's got to go. And
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so we struggled for months try tofind a name. And so as a
Latin gate, core is the Latinroot for heart, and corvan is to
or corevin is to get at theheart of wine, which for me is
variety. I think one of themany amazing things about wine is that there's
one hundred and forty thousand different winesbottled every year. There's two thousand grape
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varieties in Italy alone, and thenthe wine changes every year that it's in
the bottle. Add on top ofthat fortified and betritis and sparkling, now
natural wines. Is the very andvariability of this, like infinitely sided,
Rubik's cube is something that you canspend a lifetime exploring, and the more
you drink and taste, the moreyou realize you don't know. And I
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wanted with core of an. Oneof its great benefits to me is the
ability to taste across multiple bottles onthe average day, I'll have a third
of a glass of three different winesand sparkling a white red, maybe even
a dessert wine, and increase myexperience and my exploration of wine by a
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factor of four or five relative toopening one bottle, which i'd have a
glass or two of and then youknow, not want more of. I
sort of think of it as bythe glass program in my house. I'm
speaking from my house now, andI have about eight hundred different wines here
and a bunch of hero cops,and I have an eight hundred wine by
the glass program in my home.It's the probably the largest wine by the
glass program in the United States.As somebody who loves wine and having a
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core of and I can offer anyof those wines to anybody who comes over
whenever, and my spouse and Ican can have anything. It's that freedom
of exploration is what I wanted outof Corvin. Well, you know,
it's interesting. Wine is a livingthing, and so basically what Corvin does
it keeps the heart beating. Yeah, wow, that's that's pretty poetic.
I've never heard that. That's mymarketing background anyway, That's what I see.
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But also from a health and wellnessstandpoint, which I have a background
in as well. It also helpswith moderation because many people want to you
know, the USDA US dietary guidelinessay one glass for women, two for
men, and there is a trendtoward trying to live with moderation. But
you open that bottle of wine andyou go, I don't want to go
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over to waste, you know.I mean we probably drink more wine than
we should because we don't want togo to waste. We probably could,
you know. So it's it's notonly wine by the glass because it gives
you the exploration, but it alsohelps you moderate and continue to enjoy.
Yeah, it's I trained for arace every year and I noticed my wine
consumption dropping as I train and getcloser because I sleep better and I exercise
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better and I perform better. Sothere's you know, I was thinking about
it just recently. I was talkingwith a friend and he said, you
know beer comes in single serve,Why does wine come in five to six
servings? Why did it start thatway? And look into it. As
a guy named Book in the sixteenhundreds that was the first to commercially put
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cork and glass with wine on theother side. He was in the United
Kingdom, and it was a brilliantidea and probably the biggest transformation in wine's
history, because it allowed for thelong term storage of wine. And the
volume of the bottle was determined bythe lung volume of the glass blower.
Right, it was just around threequarters of a leader that they were blowing,
and it was inefficient to use smallerbottles. It just didn't make sense,
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and so we wound up with thisrandom volume based on the lung volume
of a seventeenth century glass blower asthe amount that we have to consume with
wine. And I think of Krevinas a way of sort of like somebody
describe it as the iTunes of wine. Is you know you used to have
to listen to the whole album.Now you can pick various songs off of
different albums and enjoy a different setof experiences any night of the week.
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I really do believe in moderation.We are all beginning to wear these watches
that track our output of all kindsand our sleep and everything else. And
I have noticed that if I drinktoo much, my sleep is terrible and
I pay for it the next day. And so I'm cautiously optimistic that Corevin
can be a part of somebody drinkingin moderation but still feeling like they've had
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the chance to explore and taste andbe satisfied with the smells and flavors that
come out of these incredible ballast ofwine that are around me. I like
a good half bottle of wine,but they don't always last very well.
Not built up sizes just do better. And we heard from an importer friend
that magnums are selling really big rightnow in the industry, so you know,
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only a reason the retail and onpremise aspect of Corvan is very helpful
for restaurants that happy restaurants. Doyou think you work with now? Well,
in the tens of thousands around theworld, the highest penetration of restaurants
by country is probably the UK,Italy and Australia. That's where it's pretty
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much common to see Corvin in anygiven restaurant, even down to bistro.
London really took Corvin to heart,and there some of the greatest wine programs
are in London by Corvin. There'ssixty seven Palm Mall, which is a
wine club that is in both Londonand Singapore, and they're expanding and they
have the world record in Corvin bythe Glass a thousand wines by the glass
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using Corvin. And you talk aboutlarge formats, it's reminding me of those
early days where I made a prototype, gave it to somebody, and then
somebody saw it and then they askedme for another one. So Corvin's fit
on magnums down to half bottles,Corvin' sparing is the same half bottles to
magnums, but we don't go abovethat. And so I've increasingly been asked
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for some custom Corevin that I've beenmaking that go up to twenty seven Leaders.
There's a guy named Emmanuel Fiskerra ata restaurants, Oh, I'm gonna
get it wrong, eighteen ninety two. Maybe it's a Gordon Rams restaurant in
London, and he was the firstto ask for one, along with some
wineries who want to be able tocheck the bottle before they send him to
events. These really massive bottles atwine and Emmanuel told me that he sold
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out his twenty seven Leader bottle ina week using Corevin. He's like,
how else would I have sold thistwenty seven Leader bottle, Right, who's
gonna buy that? Since then,I've been making about one a week for
restaurants around the world for super largeformat wines. I'm sure it's been a
big game changer for the restaurant industrybecause so often they either pour off of
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glass of wine the next day that'snot quite as good, or until You've
come along, had to invest ina big, multi thousand our Cruven a
system to preserve their wines, andthen of course it has to be somewhere
to display that. And now theCorven comes along and everything's much more simplified.
Yeah, you know, I wantedto put one of those machines in
your hand. My dream was thatwe could make one system that fit in
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your hand that was equally relevant atthe restaurant as it wasn't home. And
that's a challenge, right, becausethe demands are slightly different in the two
different situations. But we were luckyenough to thread that needle. And with
Corven Sparkling, we're seeing more andmore Champagne by the glass and sparkling wines
by the glass. Really beautiful growerChampagne's being served by the glass. Pairing
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menus with champagne had become a bigthing just recently because of Corbyn Sparkling,
and then with our standard timeless whichuses the needle and pivot, which uses
a special stopper and a vow,we're seeing an expansion of really good wine
by the glass programs. And whatI mean by really good is is not
just the really expensive and rare stuff, but the interesting stuff as well,
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where the sommier is like, Idon't know if I'm going to be able
to sell this out in a week, because who knows what it really is,
right right, But I'd love tobe able to let my guests explore
it. So I'm gonna put iton the by the Glass menu, and
so you know, they'll do weirdand wonderful up to the you know,
epic h uh, you know,grunting crew borneau and Burgundy and and wonderful
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California wines or Oregon, Australia,right, these sort of icon icon wines.
My dream is to have what acouple of restaurants have done where they
right on the bottom of their winelists, we'll serve here are the wines
by the glass, by Corpan.We'll serve you anything by the glass if
you ask for it. That's sortof my dream because ultimately I designed Corvette
for for me. This is thethis is the selfish side of me.
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I wanted to be able to goto a restaurant in order anything by the
glass, right They've they've got awine seller I don't have, and I
would love to be able to exploreit the way I do at home.
And I'm totally a willing to paythem for it, but I would love
to do it by the glass.And so the more that restaurants start to
expand, you know, access totheir sellers and giving that access to their
customers and too in some ways tohelp them create that unforgettable experience that you're
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hoping for when you go to agreat restaurant. One of the most memorable
meals I've been served with Corvin wasFlidia and New York Lydiyo Bastianich's restaurant,
which I think is no longer open. She was my god, what a
cook and she had one hundred dollarsplate of cheese is dessert and I was
like, how can you charge onehundred dollars for a plate of cheese?
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And the sum that came over andsaid because I'm going to give you three
decades of shot to Kim by corbanSo I poured, he poured an eighty
seven ninety seven, two thousand andseven, shout to Akim, about a
half a glass of each, andit was unforgettable. I remember the sum
I remember Lydio Bostianach coming by.I remember the meal that led up to
it. I remember the cheese.I remember those wines, their incredible smells
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and tastes. Of getting to seeand learn how that wine changed over time.
I'm part of what a great restaurantdoes, not just cook food and
serve wine. It's it's and withgreat service. It's to create an unforgettable
experience that is like a flag plantedin the ground and your memory in that
day and time. I've had theincredible privilege of having those kinds of experiences
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in restaurants that use Corvin all overthe world. Time Trust in Germany,
Dinner by Heston now gone in Melbourne, Australia, really wonderful restaurant his name.
I'm going to remember in Miami wherethey serve everything by the half battle,
so they full bottles of wine.You either order it by half battle
or full bottle and the prices halfas much. And I asked them,
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how are you doing this? Theysaid, well, we use Corvin to
board the first half and then wepull we pull the cork and serve the
second half. I was like,right, that's not going to do.
You know, It's true, Likeyou know, let's face it, dining
out is more it's more of aninvestment. Now it's more expensive to dine
out. Many consumers not in thebusiness, but consumers have to make choices,
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unless they're the one percent, butthey make choices about dining out.
And often it is a special occasion, or it's a family occasion, or
it's maybe once a week accasion oronce a month. But you know,
from my perspective, not wearing anindustry hat but a consumer hat. If
I'm going out and I want tohave a great meal and wine, I
want to have the chance and theopportunity to have wines I would never be
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able to buy, and I maynot be able to afford that bottle,
but I would rather say, David, let's do a pairing. Let's if
we're going to have that five coursemenu. And we did that at Luca
Carton. Remember pair us parrot andthat's what you know. What you've done
is you've enabled people who are regularpeople also. I mean you've obviously it's
(27:47):
been great for the restaurant in winebar industry because they can do this,
but for the consumer, they havea chance to say, Wow, I'm
going to have an experience. Idon't have to just go buy that wine
we always drink all the time athome because it's the least expensive on the
on the list. I can gowow, right, I can go have
a discovery and try that Burgundy orthat chateau to kim that little bit,
particularly with dessert wines, because you'renot wont to buy a half bottle of
(28:11):
dessert wine, but man tasting withthree shadowed to cam options. Wow,
you know yeah. One of thesomebody I said, it's like I was
an artist and I was painting andI had to choose blue, or I
had to choose red, right,or I had to choose yellow or white
or green or whatever. He says. Now, you know, I've got
this palette of all the wines thatI have in my cellar. I can
(28:33):
choose to serve by the glass andI don't care. Yeah, and I
can I can sell something to mycustomer that I'm truly passionate about and I
can have them try it by theglass because they were unwilling to commit to
it by the bottle because I didn'tknow what it was, right, But
if I can serve it to themby the taste or by the glass,
you know, as the restaurant inMiami, they would come by and before
you would taste the wine, beforethey pourg you the half up. Do
(28:56):
you like it? Right? Yes, that's great, right, It's this
increased level of freedom. There wasa restaurant in Amsterdam that I went to
with our team. We have aheadquarters in Amsterdam for Europe. And the
smile was using corban and she hadour aerator, which is the equivalent of
(29:17):
about forty five minutes to an hourin your glass, and it turns the
stream of corban into a shower anderrates it very effectively. And she did
something I'd never seen before. Shebrought she was gonna force by the glass.
She brought the bottle to me andshe poured me a taste, had
me taste it and with corbon,and then she put our aerator on the
front. She poured it with theaerator and she said, which do you
like better? And I said,oh, I liked it with the aerator
(29:40):
better. She said, okay,great, and then she just poured the
glass of the aerator and she shedid that with every single wine. She
said, do you like get ERRtit or not? You know, because
it's it's your choice. Some peopledo, some people don't. It's increasing
that freedom that they have to createthat memorable and perfect experience. Every day
is worth a great class. Youmay not want to open that bottle and
(30:00):
finish five servings of it, butany day is worth a great class.
And if you can do that withfreedom and without hesitation because you're not worried
about the wine that's left for therest of the bottle, that's the dream
that I had when we found inthe company. The journey is really interesting
because it really started because you know, you wanted a blue glass of wine.
Your wine didn't drink much. Itwas pregnant at the time, so
(30:21):
you couldn't really drink, and you'relike, hey, you know, I
don't want to an expensive bottle,let it go to waste. So you
know, in addition to keeping theone alive, you're addressing a food waste
problem. Yeah, and you're alsoaddressing a moderation issue which is growing,
So it addresses a lot of thingsthat are evolving in our society as well
concerns. So kind of in manyways mirrors what you've been doing in medicine
(30:45):
because a lot of your patents andinventions have been addressing developments with an aging
society and a lot of issues.So it's curious, you know, inventors
never stop inventing. Yeah, it'sa reflect do you think is next on
the horizon? Oh? So wejust launched the system of vinetas what you
(31:07):
guys got to see in New Yorkand the thought behind vinetas so when I
found a corev and I said,we're gonna be faster, easier, and
more fun independent of closure. Stillare sparkling wine always, We're always going
to do those things. I alsosaid, you know what, we want
to work to expand the ways thatwine is enjoyed, served and sold.
We're not going to replace or deletethe way that already exists. We're just
(31:30):
going to add. Maybe you're drinkinggreat bottles of wine with friends on the
Friday or Saturday, but during theweek you weren't. You were opening bad
wine. You were willing to throwhalf of it away because that's what you're
willing. You only wanted a glassor two. You know, we're gonna
change that behavior. We're gonna enableyou to have a perfect glass of wine
any day in the week, andyour spouse gonna have what they want,
and your friends gonna have what theywant. There's no compromise. That was
(31:52):
what we would hope for. AndI realized what we were doing was we
were fractionalized. We were breaking downthe service or of wine. We took
a bottle and instead of making itfive servings you had to finish over the
course of a day or two,we made it five servings you could enjoy
one at a time over the courseof years. We broke that bottle up
into different experiences. You could haveon different days, different amounts, different
(32:14):
years. What we did with Vinetas, the thought was you still had to
buy the bottle in order to breakit up into different experiences. What if
we could break the bottle up inadvance and sell wine at retail or at
the winery, buy the glass ina container that lasted for at least a
(32:34):
year. So we created Vinetas,which can fractionalize wine from a bottle or
a magnum, or from a barrelor from a tank. It's actually the
world's smallest bottling line. It's aboutthe size of a microwave on your table,
and it transfers wine from whatever it'sin into smaller bottles, recyclable glass
bottles, without any contact with air, so that the wine that's inside that
(32:58):
smaller bottle is exactly the same asthe wine than it was when it was
inside of the larger format, whateverformat that is. And my hope is,
right now we have a hundred millieater samples, we'll have fifty,
we'll have one hundred and fifty millilasamples or five ounce samples. My hope
is that ultimately you'll start to seethese things in retail. You'll see them
in retail and the wine store.You'll see them in retail in the winery
(33:20):
and also wineries are going to beable to ship with less carbon footprints,
smaller tastings to their partners in thedistributor world, in the importer world,
and into the into the restaurant worldand wine store world. So that's the
dream of Benitas. It's a simplemachine that can break down a bottle in
three minutes or a case in aboutthirty minutes. And so we're going to
try to make it so that youcould walk into a wonderful wine store instead
(33:45):
of buying one bottle, you couldbuy seven one hundred milli leader bottles and
explore seven different lines from that oneregion. My goal is to always make
it easier to explore this world wine, and that's my current drive. And
of course I have two or threethings then inventing right now, both for
core of an end for intrinsic,but I can't talk about yet, but
(34:05):
patents are going to be filed soononce we know we can get it to
work. I love these two partsof these two halves of my life.
Luckily, spine surgeons drink a lotof wine. Well, I'm I was
going to say doctors or your doctorsdrink a lot of wine. We love
doctors for that reason. Every timewe go to the doctors, they always
ask us about wine. Yeah.Just Monday, when I had my teeth
(34:27):
clean, I was talking to thedoctor for ten minutes about wine. Yeah,
and my cash for a gurologist wasasking me about cabernet. I made.
We never go to a doctor withoutany of the wine discussion. It's
a great audience. It was thefirst medicine, it was. That's right,
right, and well we all knowthat. You know, way way
back in the Middle Ages, inthe early before wine, your water could
(34:49):
be purified, and Europe in particular, they drank wine because the water was
poisoned. Yeah, it was unhealthy. That's a distinction until coffee came around,
right, and they were boiling waterthey didn't know was sterilizing it.
And I have to say that afterday I'm drinking coffee and half I'm drinking.
You need to water hydrate, tellsme all the time. Greg.
(35:15):
I'm curious about the Vintas product becausea it intrigues me, first of all.
But I remember when when we hadour winery, Melanie, we have
some friends that would come in whowere collectors. They'd come in and with
a three leader bottle, and they'dask us, with our bottling line and
our professional equipment, to break downtheir bottles because they knew they'd never drink
a three leader, so they wouldbreak it down into a smaller size and
(35:36):
we'd do that for them and thensend them home with it. How are
you addressing or how can the processof this be addressed so that it can
be legally done for the consumer.Luckily, in California and Oregon and Washington,
and I believe also even in Texas, the laws allow for a winery
or anybody with a bottling license tobreak down wines as long as the labeling
(35:58):
is appropriate. And Luckily the UnitedStates has moved aggressively toward alternative formats,
and so you can get one hundredmillion, lead fifty MIDI Leader one fifty
one eight seven five. These areall legal formats for wine to be in
and so in the United States,as long as it's a winery that's doing
it, then it can be forsale with the right labeling. It can
(36:21):
also be not for sale for samplingright and there may be a possibility that
even distributors could break it down becauseit's not for sale if they're giving it
as samples to their customers for free. There are complexities around the world,
and the first place, and wejust launched Vintas in May, the first
place to pick it up aggressively isAustralia. Australia has the most lacks laws
(36:44):
around wine in general, and Ilove them for it because it makes them
one of the most innovative cultures inwine, and so they're a wine store
can break wine down, distributor importercan break wine down, a winery can
break it down. And the formatis fine. It all comes down to
label in bottle, which is great. However, you go to a place
like Italy, go to Piemonte,everybody's got their DOCG right in Italy Piemonte.
(37:07):
If it's under three hundred and seventyfive milliters, you can't call it
Burma. If it's not bottled inKeiyanti, you cannot call it Keyanti.
It must be bottled in Keyante.You know, there's shape requirements Alsatian resling,
right, German resling. You don'tsee those in Burgundy and Bordeaux bottles.
Right. I've got an Austrian reslingfrom a friend of mine here and
(37:29):
the bottles look like this, right, they look long and skinny. And
so format laws and labeling laws aremaking vintassa more complicated product in different markets.
And so what we're gonna do inthe near term while we work with
those other markets to try to hopefullyreason some sense into them in reformatting,
(37:52):
because you know, I have tosay that the alternative formats for wine are
something that I believe is going togrow. We already see wine in the
can, We see bag in box, but wine in the can has the
amazing advantage of being single serve,single serve sparkling wine from Oregon in a
can. It's great, right.There's new companies. There's a wonderful one
(38:15):
in Sweden that is buying barrels fromgood producers and canning it and putting the
producer's name on it, and youknow there. And I've had some of
the wines that they're spectacular. SoI think there is extraordinary opportunity for single
serve wine going forward. The waycorbon solves it with benatases, with glass
(38:35):
and screwcap cans are not, unfortunately, able to manage all wines. They
haven't figured out the liner yet.I think once we do, aluminum will
become an extraordinary alternative packaging for allwines because it's light, it's opaque,
and it's fully recyclable. So thewine industry is thinking hard about carbon footprint,
and the vast majority of the carbonfootprint of the wine industry is the
(38:59):
ship of heavy glass bottles all overthe planet. And so with Vintass,
you can ship seven one hundred MILLIONARsamples for the same weight and cost as
one full bottle. And if you'resetting it just for samples for somebody,
they were normally opening it up,drinking a maybe one hundred millioners and giving
the rest of it away or throwingit down the drain. If we can
just drop that carbon footprints, getthem the right amount that they need in
(39:22):
a recyclable glass container, that's whatwe're going to do now. And we're
experimenting with aluminum for ventass as well, because it is such a magical material
if you can get it to work. You know, when we were on
our tour to France, the wholediscussion about packaging was a big one because
a lot of the bottles were beingmade in the Ukraine, yeah, and
they were not able to get outand they were shipment delays. We were
(39:45):
in Champagne and producer was saying itwas taking it three extra months to get
bottles. Everything was being delayed threemonths. So it's a it's a global
issue packaging from sustainability and reducing carbonfootprint because of the heavy bottle shipment,
but also having enough access to it. Given the political issues going on,
they're all weighing into this problem andit takes inventors to and entrepreneurs to help
(40:12):
find solutions. So hopefully, basedon your track record, you and your
team will help do more in thatarea. It's really kind of exacting.
We're working on it. I mean, we're all at our company in love
with the wine industry. And youknow, our product doesn't exist without the
wine producers and importers and distributors andrestaurateurs and consumers, right, But we
use our product ultimately on somebody else'sand if there's some way that we can
(40:35):
help them, because the upside oflighter, durable, long lasting opiate containers
is that it's better in all ways. It decreases their costs, it decreases
their shipping, which is good forthem, and it's better for humanity in
terms of costs. We just haveto make sure that it works, that
that we can sidle right up tothat mister Hook in the seventeenth century England
(40:57):
with cork and glass and try tomake some thing is as spectacularly permanent as
he did. We'll get there.Well, I think that's interesting. I
think knowing you, you will getthere. Well, we'll see it's a
there's a there's a lot of peopleworking on it, which is heartening.
My belief is that if you havea good idea, three other people have
(41:17):
had it at the same time,and it's it says who's working harder on
it and with more focus gets getsthere first. Greg. I feel that
way every day when I come upwith something, whether it's a book title,
and I'm like, damn, somebodydid it. Damn I gotta go
back that drawing where the key is, don't give up, find a new
way, find a new route.Right, that's it. That's it.
(41:37):
I'm in. Corvinus has had itsups and downs. I mean, the
pandemic came and we were selling millionsof dollars a month to restaurants and wine
bars and wineries, and then inApril of twenty twenty, we sold four
hundred and thirty five dollars to thetrade around the world. Right, it
was a bit of a shock thecompanies. Yeah, but we know not
(41:59):
to not to not to mention anotherone of my products. But we we
pivoted and we went to the consumer, and the consumer wanted to not sacrifice
that wonderful restaurant experience at home,and they bought Corvin and Drobes and you
know, it was twenty twenty wasour best year until that point. You
(42:20):
know, we ran all those Instagramlives and we were talking to wineries and
customers around the world. And oneof the things you were talking about the
Ukraine. One of the things thatI've noticed more and more the more I've
traveled with Corvin and with my spinalimplant company is that medical problems are universal,
and wine is universal. You candrink wine the same way in Shanghai
as you do in Taipei, asyou do in Sydney, as you do
(42:42):
in London, as you do inParis, as you do in California,
New York and Texas and you knowChicago. So it's it's a thread that
connects all of us in a verysimilar way. It's a shared experience and
a shared love that's shared in asimilar way by everybody. You know,
we had to wear house and ourdistributor in Ukraine had a warehouse that had
(43:02):
a lot of Corbin in it andan ungodly collection of some of the world's
finest wines. And then the firstweek of the war, it was shelved
by the Russians because he had logisticsthat could get anywhere in the country.
I blew up. They blew upour whole product line and all that wine,
and we had to pull out ofRussia because couldn't sell there anymore given
what they had just done. Andso we're not free of politics. But
(43:25):
I hope as an ultruist, thatpeople recognize their shared experiences, like wine
consumption, like medical problems, thathumanity that led to the first wines being
made in Georgia, Iran or youknow, whoever, whoever wins that argument,
or Greece, and that that that'sa through thread that runs through us
(43:47):
all and all of our cultures,that connects us all enough to divide us.
Wine, as Marquis Dangeville, GianDangeville said to me, as the
most social beverage. And he's right. Speaking of altruism, do you have
any philanthropic initiatives that you are committedto? Yeah, well, we don't
(44:07):
have a foundation. I don't havea foundation, but Corvin makes donations to
all sorts of charities in the wineworld. Reeling forward getting Benjamin's work with
the physically less abled or injured,we've been supporting him. Wine and Wheels
will win and Wheels Wine unify.A big believer in as is the entire
(44:30):
Corban team in our wonderful CEO.There big believer in more diversity in wine.
It's a good career in the restauranttrade. It's a high paying career
in the restaurant trade, and it'sbeen almost exclusively white and male. And
if we can help to break thatgrip on the SMA world, we would
love to be a part of it. We're active in charities, both through
(44:52):
giving in product also during the pandemicand giving in money. Bobby Stuckey was
doing is Independent Restaurant Coalition the IRC, and I remember our largest charitable events.
It was extraordinary. We think wewere doing a dollar per person who
joined Cheers around the world, andwe had a wonderful Australian producer who does
(45:15):
Clonakila. We had Devanique Sanders fromObaye, We had Federico Wineries, we
had Adrian Bridge from Taylor Flaggate Portsand Portugal. You know, all of
us were in lockdown. We wereraising money for Independent Restaurant Coalition and we
did a Cheers around the world andI think we raised around one hundred thousand.
(45:35):
There was way more people. Oursite crashed. It was It was
one of those wonderful connective experiences.Yeah, we do stuff that's in our
industry. Yeah, it's important,you know, it's important to give back,
and because you come from the medicalfield, you're already into that call
to serve. So it's good toknow. Well, Greg, we have
really enjoyed our visit. We've cometo the end, we're almost the end
(45:58):
to wrap. We really appreciate yourtime. We appreciate all you do to
help people and solve problems. Thankyou for including us on that really incredible
dinner, because that's really how wemet and connected with you, and we
hope to stay connected with you.Greg. Absolutely, let's get back together
over some really spectacular still in sparklingwine and go explore this great world what
(46:19):
we've got. We've been speaking withGreg Lambrick, the founder of Corvan,
the inventor of course, with theinventor of Corvan. We've been speaking with
Greg Lambrick, the founder and inventorof Corvan, which really has been a
game changer. It's been great tomeet you and it was great to learn
more about the history over the lastten years of your invention, and we
(46:40):
look forward to seeing what you're goingto do next, because we know something
goods down the road, and we'llbe toasting with you. Thank you very
much, and thank you for allthat you do and all the interesting content
that you give to the wine worldthat gives us the context behind those wonderful
bottles that we all drink. Thankyou, We really appreciate it. So
you've been listening to another of theConnected Table Live with Melanie Young and David
(47:02):
Ransom, and always our messages stayinsatiably curious
The topics and opinions expressed in thefollowing show are solely those of the hosts
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(00:21):
FORCY Radio. Welcome to the ConnectedTable Live. We're your hosts, Melanie
(00:44):
Young and David Ransom. Your insay, She'll be curious culinary couple. We
enjoy bringing you the dynamic people whowork front and center and behind the scenes
in wine, food, spirits andhospitality around the world. We love traveling
and sharing their stories and our discoverieswith you. And you're listening live,
but you can hear all our showson over thirty five channels, including the
(01:07):
Big Ones, Eheart, Spotify,Apple, you name it, and we
hope you follow us on the ConnectedTable at Instagram and our blog. Our
guest today he is like a seriousinventor. He has over a hundred patents.
This is a little bit of adetour from what we normally do on
the Connected Table, which is talkabout wine or food or places we've been.
(01:27):
This is talking about a product,but it's a product that we came
in touch with a couple of monthsago, really for the first time,
and really got to experience it withthe inventor and so that's why we have
him on our show today well,and also his story it aligns with what
the Connected Table is all about,which is interviewing people who are founders and
leaders and doing things that make along term impact on the industry. And
(01:49):
when we had sat down and haddinner with him in New York and Lapavion
restaurant shout out to Daniel Blue,we found me quite personable and really not
geeky, and he is a greatbackstory. So I'm gonna set this up.
We're with Greg Lambrecht, an inventor, as we said, and founder
and board member of Corvan, Inc. A global wine technology company that really
(02:12):
empowers wine lovers to try new winesor save were special bottles over time.
So it's a type of wine preservation. And we'd actually tried some of the
older vintages against newer vintages that hadbeen with Corvan and it was really very
hard to tell the difference, right, it was actually and we were pretty
flabbrigasted by that because everybody's a skepticwhen they don't know what the product is.
But you know, this has reallybeen a game changer in the wine
(02:35):
industry because we've all had that bottlethat we wanted a glass of but we
didn't know what to do with atthe end of the night, hoping that
it would be good the next day. This changes that dynamic and that's really
how Greg's story started in wine.But just let's take it back. It's
not just about wine with Greg.He's also this is pretty amazing. He's
like a nuclear scientist, medical doctor, slash inventor, entrepreneur. Okay,
I'll world into one. He isalso the founder and executive director of Intrinsic
(03:00):
Therapeutics, which is a venture backedmedical device company focusing on addressing the needs
of patients with spinal disorders. Well, I you know, says I have
a health and wellness background. Thatjust hit a lot of hot buttons to
me, because he helps a lotof people and there's a backstory to that.
He also works with Viacre, anothermedical device company in Boston, Worries
Bace. So this is a guythat's like running medical companies, over one
(03:22):
hundred patents, and he has aseveral headquarters in Asia, Europe and the
United States for Corvan, which isnow available in sixty countries and in fine
restaurants and wine bars, et cetera, and homes around the world. Really
fascinating man. So, who arereally happy that you're taking the time out
of what's clearly your busy schedule,Gregg to join us on the connected table.
(03:43):
Oh thanks for having me. You'rereminding me of that wonderful evening with
Daniel Blues Restaurant and the paton thelongest online tasting I've ever done with previously
Corban models, and I'm glad thatyou guys were there. And it was
shocking even to me. I didn'treally design Corbin too. Have Wine's last
eighteen nineteen years post Corvin that wasthat was crazy and wonderful experience. It
(04:06):
was really eye opening for us aswell. I mean, we had heard
about Corvin, but we really hadn'tgotten a close personal with it and enabled
us to do that. But moreimportantly, we got to know you,
so we like to start our showswith our guests backstory down to this.
Please share with our listeners where wereyou born in raised You have a very
(04:26):
interesting family background. Yeah, I'ma first generation American. My parents are
from Germany and Austria. I wasborn in New York City Lennox Hill Hospital,
where my spinaling plants currently for saleand being implanted. Kind of come
full circle. I spent from zeroto eleven in Manhattan on Gramercy Park and
(04:48):
then moved out to southern California.Went to high school in Corona del Mar,
which is right next to Newport Beach, somewhere between San Diego and Los
Angeles. How to surf, learnedhow to drive, fell in love with
the sun, which in Manhattan Ionly saw as it passed through my street
for a couple of minutes, andthen I got interested in physics, got
(05:11):
interested in nuclear physics. I washoping that we could get off of fossil
fuels and that we could find abetter way to make energy, and so
I was fascinated by fusion power,where they where we'd fuse hydrogen atoms together
to make helium and it's really aclean form of energy that the Sun uses,
and we were hoping we could doit here on Earth. And so
I went to MIT, where theywere one of the leaders in fusion power,
(05:33):
and studied that for four years,and then went off to Japan to
try to actually design and build thenext fusion reactor. Lived in Kobe for
a year and a half two yearsworking from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and realized
that fusion wasn't gonna work, thatit would never be cheaper than pulling black
stuff out of the ground or nowluckily taking the exhaust of fusion out of
(05:54):
the sky as the Sun hits ourplanet and solar power, which is just
a better solution into medicine. Cameback to the United States and went into
grad school to study biomedical engineering andhave been working in that the rest of
my life. That's a field I'mvery passionate about. I love the opportunity
to sort of intersect with somebody whenthey're in a moment of medical crisis and
(06:16):
their trajectory has been tipped off therise and they're headed down, and if
you can interceed at that difficult momentand try to change your trajectory back and
get them back to full health.That's that's really a wonderful way to bend
a career. So medicine has beenpart of my life since nineteen ninety three.
Oh, it was a long timeago, and yeah, I fell
(06:38):
in love with it. So Iwant to bring up two people who are
family members that clearly had an impacton you. And there may be more.
But when was your grandfather and theother was your mother, and both
of them had situations, were insituations that clearly impacted some of your career
to share. Yeah, my grandfather, Herbert Wagner, was a really pre
(07:00):
eminent engineer and scientist. In thenineteen hundreds, he developed one of the
first functional jet engines. He developedguided missile systems or Germany during the war.
He was captured by the Americans inforty four as part of a Project
paper Clip, where they were lookingfor scientists to bring over to the United
States. My grandfather had no lovefor the German government, and so he
(07:23):
was happily captured and brought to theUS, where he worked on the sidewinder
hawk and tow missiles, anything thatyou could guide as a guided missile.
He loved and I remember when Iwas twelve years old and Newport Beach.
We were living in his house andhe came up to me and he see
him You seemed like a smart guy. There are enough weapons, work in
energy or medicine, will never haveenough of either, And he wasn't a
(07:45):
man of many words, And thosefew sentences really set me on my career.
And I agree with him. Hewas right right. You know,
we have enough weapons and we'll neverhave enough medicine or energy, and if
we can solve either or both,it will lead to a better humanity.
And so I feel like I havea bit of a karmic debt to pay
(08:07):
from from what he designed and developedme. Outside of the jet engine was
great, That's a good one,but uh, you know, I he
set me on my way and gaveme an emotional drive that i've I've never
I've never lost my mother. Hisdaughter suffered from being the daughter of an
autocratic Austrian family from who was bornin nineteen hundred, my grandfather, and
(08:33):
so despite her intellect and brilliance andher proclivity toward physics, uh, she
was sent to a finishing school rightto almost like homec on steroids and it's
always denied the opportunity to be whatshe could have been. She's spectacularly interested
in physics and got me motivated inthat direction. But what really changed my
(08:56):
life again was she suffered from lowback problems. She had herniated discs in
her early fifties and then had surgeriesand then failed surgeries, and then repeated
surgeries and then more surgeries, andshe went from being an active woman who
climbed mountains in her in her fiftiesto barely being able to walk a hundred
(09:16):
yards. I always work on myown problems or my own family's problems,
so I found it intrinsic therapeutics toto try to address that, and uh,
you know, it took me alittle while, my team and I,
but now we've we've got a systemthat prevents the reoperations that she had.
We try to make the first surgeryto last on patients who have discarnations.
And so Barricade launched the United Statesin twenty twenty, like two days
(09:39):
before the pandemic hit. It wasbad timing, but it's uh, it's
it's been. It's been gratifying.I was just in surgery this week in
Texas with a new surgeon I wastraining, and we were implanting a firefighter
and a pilot. And to lookat those folks, meeting them before surgery,
seeing the pain they're in, andmeeting them afterwards and seeing how much
(10:00):
better they feel. You know,it's addictive. You want to keep doing
it. You know what I loveabout entrepreneurs and inventors, David, and
their soft spot is that they solveproblems. An inventor acts on his or
her ideas, and a successful entrepreneursolves a problem and fills the need.
That's the core, that's the why. Yeah, and you really have done
(10:20):
that. You know. It's alwaysa team. I had a friend who
who said, an inventor comes upwith an idea, an entrepreneur uses that
idea to change the world. Andin order to change the world, and
actually it's much more fun to doit with a deep to build a team
of great people like Intrinsic Therapeutics has, like Korvin has. I was just
(10:43):
we were celebrating our tenth anniversary beingon the market with Corvin. We launched
in at the end of July intwenty thirteen, and I don't think any
of us really knew what was goingto happen with Corvin. You know,
we was something that started in mybasement. I wanted a great glass of
wine. My wife didn't drink muchwine, or if she did, she
wanted something else. So one ofus was compromising. Friends came over,
(11:09):
they were always asking for what's open, you know, not necessarily satisfying what
they wanted, but just willing todrink whatever we had open. And I
thought, you know what if wecould change that dynamic and pour everyone whatever
they want to drink. But Inever really realized that it would grow outside
of my basement and something that Iwanted to use to being something that is
used across the industry. You know, these ten years have been if you're
(11:33):
a wine lover, which I am, I've never worked in the wine industry
to come at it in this weirdtangent of having a wine serving system that
preserves the rest of the wine indefinitely. To parlay that into meeting with wine
makers all over the world, restaurantsand suya all over the world, and
wine lovers all over the world andseeing that this beautiful culture around that surrounds
(11:58):
wine is part of the quality oflife rights in medicine, we work on
extending life, and in wine wework on quality of life, and I
think they're equally important. It's somethingthat I've come to realize. The passion
that people have for their health andfor medicine, and the passion that people
have for travel on wine and thesocializing that happens around wine is very similar,
(12:22):
similar intensities. Like many inventors,you actually started sharing your product,
the core of end, early prototypesof it, at least with your friends,
and everybody got hooked on it.What was the jump to where you
said I think I can do thiscommercially. Oh, there are a couple
of people that are responsible for that. I was running a medical to medical
companies at the time, and soyou know, I have a machine shop
(12:45):
in my basement and I would machineimproved prototypes. That made the first one
in nineteen ninety nine, which myson named wine Mosquito, and that name
stuck more than a decade, almostattracted when I found the company founded the
company, it was called Mosquito Inkand crazy that I thought I could raise
money around that. But I madethat first prototype in ninety nine. I
made a really good prototype in twothousand and three that allowed me to change
(13:09):
the different needles and gases and pressuresthat I used to push the wine out
of the bottle and never really thoughtanybody else wanted it. A friend of
mine was getting married in two thousandand four, Ryan Trant, he's a
venture capitalist investor in my company's guythat I like an enormous amount, and
so I made him one first personoutside of the house that got one,
and he was like, this isgreat. You know my friend would like
(13:30):
one too, And I made anotherone, and then friends came over and
saw how I was drinking differently andthey wanted one, and their friends wanted
one. So I went from makingone every couple of years to one a
month, to one a week tofour a week. And you know,
I was accepting payment in wine people. I would just say, hey,
give me as much wine of whateverwine you think is worth this system.
(13:54):
And so I started to get casesof wine, a really lovely winer,
cases of magnums from one friend ofmine as a surgeon in Oregon, and
I started to think, wow,you know people really value this. Or
when they would break, they wouldsend it back and say, you've got
to send me another one immediately,because I forgot how to drink without this
thing. And then a friend ofmine, a guy named Jeff Arnold who's
(14:16):
been my adviser and friend for along time. We were at a breakfast
that we did every week on aFriday, and Jeff looked at me and
he said, I'm writing a checkfor thirty thousand dollars and we're going to
go and deposit this into a bank, and we are founding a company,
and if you choose not to doit, I will found it on my
own. I never really believed thatit would be a company, even after
(14:39):
all those years of testing eleven ortwelve years of testing and making them for
friends. I just thought it wassort of a niche thing that a couple
of people wanted and loved. ButJeff, you know, basically grabbed me
by the year and pulled me tothe bank, and you know, we
raised our first round of financing withina week and took off. That was
(15:00):
twenty eleven, and then we launchedin twenty thirteen, and it's been crazy.
You know, it's an interesting melanie. When we had dinner with Greg,
he actually brought a bottle that hehad originally put the core of van
in two thousand and four, nowthat's nineteen years ago. Yeah, and
we tasted from that bottle and therewas no difference. So I was floored
(15:22):
by that. Yeah, it waspretty amazing. Also, you had the
mosquito and it really did look likea mosquito or a hornet or something.
Had some of the early prototypes withhim. It was great, it looked
great, It actually looked it camefrom a medical device, you know,
from someone who knows how to createmedical devices. It was really quite fascinating
to see that. And of courseyou had to trial an era R and
(15:43):
D all the things you need todo that you know from your training to
get to where it clicks. AndGod bless you. You got venture capital.
A lot of people can't get pastthat part, and you seem to
have done very well with that withall of your companies. Well, first
of all, why did you callit cor Evan, what's the core apart?
Ah? Yeah, so I'm aLatin geek, and I also never
(16:06):
ran Corvin a CEO. And Ihad a wonderful CEO, Nicholas Arras,
who built a curig. He wasour founding CEO. I pulled him out
of retirement when he was teaching atHarvard, and he looked at me and
he said, you know, winemosquito. Yeah, we can't call it
that that. You know, they'reannoying and they kill people. Is this?
I know, it's a sticky name. It's got to go. And
(16:26):
so we struggled for months try tofind a name. And so as a
Latin gate, core is the Latinroot for heart, and corvan is to
or corevin is to get at theheart of wine, which for me is
variety. I think one of themany amazing things about wine is that there's
one hundred and forty thousand different winesbottled every year. There's two thousand grape
(16:48):
varieties in Italy alone, and thenthe wine changes every year that it's in
the bottle. Add on top ofthat fortified and betritis and sparkling, now
natural wines. Is the very andvariability of this, like infinitely sided,
Rubik's cube is something that you canspend a lifetime exploring, and the more
you drink and taste, the moreyou realize you don't know. And I
(17:11):
wanted with core of an. Oneof its great benefits to me is the
ability to taste across multiple bottles onthe average day, I'll have a third
of a glass of three different winesand sparkling a white red, maybe even
a dessert wine, and increase myexperience and my exploration of wine by a
(17:32):
factor of four or five relative toopening one bottle, which i'd have a
glass or two of and then youknow, not want more of. I
sort of think of it as bythe glass program in my house. I'm
speaking from my house now, andI have about eight hundred different wines here
and a bunch of hero cops,and I have an eight hundred wine by
the glass program in my home.It's the probably the largest wine by the
glass program in the United States.As somebody who loves wine and having a
(17:56):
core of and I can offer anyof those wines to anybody who comes over
whenever, and my spouse and Ican can have anything. It's that freedom
of exploration is what I wanted outof Corvin. Well, you know,
it's interesting. Wine is a livingthing, and so basically what Corvin does
it keeps the heart beating. Yeah, wow, that's that's pretty poetic.
I've never heard that. That's mymarketing background anyway, That's what I see.
(18:21):
But also from a health and wellnessstandpoint, which I have a background
in as well. It also helpswith moderation because many people want to you
know, the USDA US dietary guidelinessay one glass for women, two for
men, and there is a trendtoward trying to live with moderation. But
you open that bottle of wine andyou go, I don't want to go
(18:41):
over to waste, you know.I mean we probably drink more wine than
we should because we don't want togo to waste. We probably could,
you know. So it's it's notonly wine by the glass because it gives
you the exploration, but it alsohelps you moderate and continue to enjoy.
Yeah, it's I trained for arace every year and I noticed my wine
consumption dropping as I train and getcloser because I sleep better and I exercise
(19:03):
better and I perform better. Sothere's you know, I was thinking about
it just recently. I was talkingwith a friend and he said, you
know beer comes in single serve,Why does wine come in five to six
servings? Why did it start thatway? And look into it. As
a guy named Book in the sixteenhundreds that was the first to commercially put
(19:25):
cork and glass with wine on theother side. He was in the United
Kingdom, and it was a brilliantidea and probably the biggest transformation in wine's
history, because it allowed for thelong term storage of wine. And the
volume of the bottle was determined bythe lung volume of the glass blower.
Right, it was just around threequarters of a leader that they were blowing,
and it was inefficient to use smallerbottles. It just didn't make sense,
(19:49):
and so we wound up with thisrandom volume based on the lung volume
of a seventeenth century glass blower asthe amount that we have to consume with
wine. And I think of Krevinas a way of sort of like somebody
describe it as the iTunes of wine. Is you know you used to have
to listen to the whole album.Now you can pick various songs off of
different albums and enjoy a different setof experiences any night of the week.
(20:15):
I really do believe in moderation.We are all beginning to wear these watches
that track our output of all kindsand our sleep and everything else. And
I have noticed that if I drinktoo much, my sleep is terrible and
I pay for it the next day. And so I'm cautiously optimistic that Corevin
can be a part of somebody drinkingin moderation but still feeling like they've had
(20:37):
the chance to explore and taste andbe satisfied with the smells and flavors that
come out of these incredible ballast ofwine that are around me. I like
a good half bottle of wine,but they don't always last very well.
Not built up sizes just do better. And we heard from an importer friend
that magnums are selling really big rightnow in the industry, so you know,
(20:59):
only a reason the retail and onpremise aspect of Corvan is very helpful
for restaurants that happy restaurants. Doyou think you work with now? Well,
in the tens of thousands around theworld, the highest penetration of restaurants
by country is probably the UK,Italy and Australia. That's where it's pretty
(21:22):
much common to see Corvin in anygiven restaurant, even down to bistro.
London really took Corvin to heart,and there some of the greatest wine programs
are in London by Corvin. There'ssixty seven Palm Mall, which is a
wine club that is in both Londonand Singapore, and they're expanding and they
have the world record in Corvin bythe Glass a thousand wines by the glass
(21:45):
using Corvin. And you talk aboutlarge formats, it's reminding me of those
early days where I made a prototype, gave it to somebody, and then
somebody saw it and then they askedme for another one. So Corvin's fit
on magnums down to half bottles,Corvin' sparing is the same half bottles to
magnums, but we don't go abovethat. And so I've increasingly been asked
(22:07):
for some custom Corevin that I've beenmaking that go up to twenty seven Leaders.
There's a guy named Emmanuel Fiskerra ata restaurants, Oh, I'm gonna
get it wrong, eighteen ninety two. Maybe it's a Gordon Rams restaurant in
London, and he was the firstto ask for one, along with some
wineries who want to be able tocheck the bottle before they send him to
events. These really massive bottles atwine and Emmanuel told me that he sold
(22:32):
out his twenty seven Leader bottle ina week using Corevin. He's like,
how else would I have sold thistwenty seven Leader bottle, Right, who's
gonna buy that? Since then,I've been making about one a week for
restaurants around the world for super largeformat wines. I'm sure it's been a
big game changer for the restaurant industrybecause so often they either pour off of
(22:52):
glass of wine the next day that'snot quite as good, or until You've
come along, had to invest ina big, multi thousand our Cruven a
system to preserve their wines, andthen of course it has to be somewhere
to display that. And now theCorven comes along and everything's much more simplified.
Yeah, you know, I wantedto put one of those machines in
your hand. My dream was thatwe could make one system that fit in
(23:15):
your hand that was equally relevant atthe restaurant as it wasn't home. And
that's a challenge, right, becausethe demands are slightly different in the two
different situations. But we were luckyenough to thread that needle. And with
Corven Sparkling, we're seeing more andmore Champagne by the glass and sparkling wines
by the glass. Really beautiful growerChampagne's being served by the glass. Pairing
(23:36):
menus with champagne had become a bigthing just recently because of Corbyn Sparkling,
and then with our standard timeless whichuses the needle and pivot, which uses
a special stopper and a vow,we're seeing an expansion of really good wine
by the glass programs. And whatI mean by really good is is not
just the really expensive and rare stuff, but the interesting stuff as well,
(24:00):
where the sommier is like, Idon't know if I'm going to be able
to sell this out in a week, because who knows what it really is,
right right, But I'd love tobe able to let my guests explore
it. So I'm gonna put iton the by the Glass menu, and
so you know, they'll do weirdand wonderful up to the you know,
epic h uh, you know,grunting crew borneau and Burgundy and and wonderful
(24:22):
California wines or Oregon, Australia,right, these sort of icon icon wines.
My dream is to have what acouple of restaurants have done where they
right on the bottom of their winelists, we'll serve here are the wines
by the glass, by Corpan.We'll serve you anything by the glass if
you ask for it. That's sortof my dream because ultimately I designed Corvette
for for me. This is thethis is the selfish side of me.
(24:44):
I wanted to be able to goto a restaurant in order anything by the
glass, right They've they've got awine seller I don't have, and I
would love to be able to exploreit the way I do at home.
And I'm totally a willing to paythem for it, but I would love
to do it by the glass.And so the more that restaurants start to
expand, you know, access totheir sellers and giving that access to their
customers and too in some ways tohelp them create that unforgettable experience that you're
(25:08):
hoping for when you go to agreat restaurant. One of the most memorable
meals I've been served with Corvin wasFlidia and New York Lydiyo Bastianich's restaurant,
which I think is no longer open. She was my god, what a
cook and she had one hundred dollarsplate of cheese is dessert and I was
like, how can you charge onehundred dollars for a plate of cheese?
(25:30):
And the sum that came over andsaid because I'm going to give you three
decades of shot to Kim by corbanSo I poured, he poured an eighty
seven ninety seven, two thousand andseven, shout to Akim, about a
half a glass of each, andit was unforgettable. I remember the sum
I remember Lydio Bostianach coming by.I remember the meal that led up to
it. I remember the cheese.I remember those wines, their incredible smells
(25:52):
and tastes. Of getting to seeand learn how that wine changed over time.
I'm part of what a great restaurantdoes, not just cook food and
serve wine. It's it's and withgreat service. It's to create an unforgettable
experience that is like a flag plantedin the ground and your memory in that
day and time. I've had theincredible privilege of having those kinds of experiences
(26:17):
in restaurants that use Corvin all overthe world. Time Trust in Germany,
Dinner by Heston now gone in Melbourne, Australia, really wonderful restaurant his name.
I'm going to remember in Miami wherethey serve everything by the half battle,
so they full bottles of wine.You either order it by half battle
or full bottle and the prices halfas much. And I asked them,
(26:37):
how are you doing this? Theysaid, well, we use Corvin to
board the first half and then wepull we pull the cork and serve the
second half. I was like,right, that's not going to do.
You know, It's true, Likeyou know, let's face it, dining
out is more it's more of aninvestment. Now it's more expensive to dine
out. Many consumers not in thebusiness, but consumers have to make choices,
(27:03):
unless they're the one percent, butthey make choices about dining out.
And often it is a special occasion, or it's a family occasion, or
it's maybe once a week accasion oronce a month. But you know,
from my perspective, not wearing anindustry hat but a consumer hat. If
I'm going out and I want tohave a great meal and wine, I
want to have the chance and theopportunity to have wines I would never be
(27:26):
able to buy, and I maynot be able to afford that bottle,
but I would rather say, David, let's do a pairing. Let's if
we're going to have that five coursemenu. And we did that at Luca
Carton. Remember pair us parrot andthat's what you know. What you've done
is you've enabled people who are regularpeople also. I mean you've obviously it's
(27:47):
been great for the restaurant in winebar industry because they can do this,
but for the consumer, they havea chance to say, Wow, I'm
going to have an experience. Idon't have to just go buy that wine
we always drink all the time athome because it's the least expensive on the
on the list. I can gowow, right, I can go have
a discovery and try that Burgundy orthat chateau to kim that little bit,
particularly with dessert wines, because you'renot wont to buy a half bottle of
(28:11):
dessert wine, but man tasting withthree shadowed to cam options. Wow,
you know yeah. One of thesomebody I said, it's like I was
an artist and I was painting andI had to choose blue, or I
had to choose red, right,or I had to choose yellow or white
or green or whatever. He says. Now, you know, I've got
this palette of all the wines thatI have in my cellar. I can
(28:33):
choose to serve by the glass andI don't care. Yeah, and I
can I can sell something to mycustomer that I'm truly passionate about and I
can have them try it by theglass because they were unwilling to commit to
it by the bottle because I didn'tknow what it was, right, But
if I can serve it to themby the taste or by the glass,
you know, as the restaurant inMiami, they would come by and before
you would taste the wine, beforethey pourg you the half up. Do
(28:56):
you like it? Right? Yes, that's great, right, It's this
increased level of freedom. There wasa restaurant in Amsterdam that I went to
with our team. We have aheadquarters in Amsterdam for Europe. And the
smile was using corban and she hadour aerator, which is the equivalent of
(29:17):
about forty five minutes to an hourin your glass, and it turns the
stream of corban into a shower anderrates it very effectively. And she did
something I'd never seen before. Shebrought she was gonna force by the glass.
She brought the bottle to me andshe poured me a taste, had
me taste it and with corbon,and then she put our aerator on the
front. She poured it with theaerator and she said, which do you
like better? And I said,oh, I liked it with the aerator
(29:40):
better. She said, okay,great, and then she just poured the
glass of the aerator and she shedid that with every single wine. She
said, do you like get ERRtit or not? You know, because
it's it's your choice. Some peopledo, some people don't. It's increasing
that freedom that they have to createthat memorable and perfect experience. Every day
is worth a great class. Youmay not want to open that bottle and
(30:00):
finish five servings of it, butany day is worth a great class.
And if you can do that withfreedom and without hesitation because you're not worried
about the wine that's left for therest of the bottle, that's the dream
that I had when we found inthe company. The journey is really interesting
because it really started because you know, you wanted a blue glass of wine.
Your wine didn't drink much. Itwas pregnant at the time, so
(30:21):
you couldn't really drink, and you'relike, hey, you know, I
don't want to an expensive bottle,let it go to waste. So you
know, in addition to keeping theone alive, you're addressing a food waste
problem. Yeah, and you're alsoaddressing a moderation issue which is growing,
So it addresses a lot of thingsthat are evolving in our society as well
concerns. So kind of in manyways mirrors what you've been doing in medicine
(30:45):
because a lot of your patents andinventions have been addressing developments with an aging
society and a lot of issues.So it's curious, you know, inventors
never stop inventing. Yeah, it'sa reflect do you think is next on
the horizon? Oh? So wejust launched the system of vinetas what you
(31:07):
guys got to see in New Yorkand the thought behind vinetas so when I
found a corev and I said,we're gonna be faster, easier, and
more fun independent of closure. Stillare sparkling wine always, We're always going
to do those things. I alsosaid, you know what, we want
to work to expand the ways thatwine is enjoyed, served and sold.
We're not going to replace or deletethe way that already exists. We're just
(31:30):
going to add. Maybe you're drinkinggreat bottles of wine with friends on the
Friday or Saturday, but during theweek you weren't. You were opening bad
wine. You were willing to throwhalf of it away because that's what you're
willing. You only wanted a glassor two. You know, we're gonna
change that behavior. We're gonna enableyou to have a perfect glass of wine
any day in the week, andyour spouse gonna have what they want,
and your friends gonna have what theywant. There's no compromise. That was
(31:52):
what we would hope for. AndI realized what we were doing was we
were fractionalized. We were breaking downthe service or of wine. We took
a bottle and instead of making itfive servings you had to finish over the
course of a day or two,we made it five servings you could enjoy
one at a time over the courseof years. We broke that bottle up
into different experiences. You could haveon different days, different amounts, different
(32:14):
years. What we did with Vinetas, the thought was you still had to
buy the bottle in order to breakit up into different experiences. What if
we could break the bottle up inadvance and sell wine at retail or at
the winery, buy the glass ina container that lasted for at least a
(32:34):
year. So we created Vinetas,which can fractionalize wine from a bottle or
a magnum, or from a barrelor from a tank. It's actually the
world's smallest bottling line. It's aboutthe size of a microwave on your table,
and it transfers wine from whatever it'sin into smaller bottles, recyclable glass
bottles, without any contact with air, so that the wine that's inside that
(32:58):
smaller bottle is exactly the same asthe wine than it was when it was
inside of the larger format, whateverformat that is. And my hope is,
right now we have a hundred millieater samples, we'll have fifty,
we'll have one hundred and fifty millilasamples or five ounce samples. My hope
is that ultimately you'll start to seethese things in retail. You'll see them
in retail and the wine store.You'll see them in retail in the winery
(33:20):
and also wineries are going to beable to ship with less carbon footprints,
smaller tastings to their partners in thedistributor world, in the importer world,
and into the into the restaurant worldand wine store world. So that's the
dream of Benitas. It's a simplemachine that can break down a bottle in
three minutes or a case in aboutthirty minutes. And so we're going to
try to make it so that youcould walk into a wonderful wine store instead
(33:45):
of buying one bottle, you couldbuy seven one hundred milli leader bottles and
explore seven different lines from that oneregion. My goal is to always make
it easier to explore this world wine, and that's my current drive. And
of course I have two or threethings then inventing right now, both for
core of an end for intrinsic,but I can't talk about yet, but
(34:05):
patents are going to be filed soononce we know we can get it to
work. I love these two partsof these two halves of my life.
Luckily, spine surgeons drink a lotof wine. Well, I'm I was
going to say doctors or your doctorsdrink a lot of wine. We love
doctors for that reason. Every timewe go to the doctors, they always
ask us about wine. Yeah.Just Monday, when I had my teeth
(34:27):
clean, I was talking to thedoctor for ten minutes about wine. Yeah,
and my cash for a gurologist wasasking me about cabernet. I made.
We never go to a doctor withoutany of the wine discussion. It's
a great audience. It was thefirst medicine, it was. That's right,
right, and well we all knowthat. You know, way way
back in the Middle Ages, inthe early before wine, your water could
(34:49):
be purified, and Europe in particular, they drank wine because the water was
poisoned. Yeah, it was unhealthy. That's a distinction until coffee came around,
right, and they were boiling waterthey didn't know was sterilizing it.
And I have to say that afterday I'm drinking coffee and half I'm drinking.
You need to water hydrate, tellsme all the time. Greg.
(35:15):
I'm curious about the Vintas product becausea it intrigues me, first of all.
But I remember when when we hadour winery, Melanie, we have
some friends that would come in whowere collectors. They'd come in and with
a three leader bottle, and they'dask us, with our bottling line and
our professional equipment, to break downtheir bottles because they knew they'd never drink
a three leader, so they wouldbreak it down into a smaller size and
(35:36):
we'd do that for them and thensend them home with it. How are
you addressing or how can the processof this be addressed so that it can
be legally done for the consumer.Luckily, in California and Oregon and Washington,
and I believe also even in Texas, the laws allow for a winery
or anybody with a bottling license tobreak down wines as long as the labeling
(35:58):
is appropriate. And Luckily the UnitedStates has moved aggressively toward alternative formats,
and so you can get one hundredmillion, lead fifty MIDI Leader one fifty
one eight seven five. These areall legal formats for wine to be in
and so in the United States,as long as it's a winery that's doing
it, then it can be forsale with the right labeling. It can
(36:21):
also be not for sale for samplingright and there may be a possibility that
even distributors could break it down becauseit's not for sale if they're giving it
as samples to their customers for free. There are complexities around the world,
and the first place, and wejust launched Vintas in May, the first
place to pick it up aggressively isAustralia. Australia has the most lacks laws
(36:44):
around wine in general, and Ilove them for it because it makes them
one of the most innovative cultures inwine, and so they're a wine store
can break wine down, distributor importercan break wine down, a winery can
break it down. And the formatis fine. It all comes down to
label in bottle, which is great. However, you go to a place
like Italy, go to Piemonte,everybody's got their DOCG right in Italy Piemonte.
(37:07):
If it's under three hundred and seventyfive milliters, you can't call it
Burma. If it's not bottled inKeiyanti, you cannot call it Keyanti.
It must be bottled in Keyante.You know, there's shape requirements Alsatian resling,
right, German resling. You don'tsee those in Burgundy and Bordeaux bottles.
Right. I've got an Austrian reslingfrom a friend of mine here and
(37:29):
the bottles look like this, right, they look long and skinny. And
so format laws and labeling laws aremaking vintassa more complicated product in different markets.
And so what we're gonna do inthe near term while we work with
those other markets to try to hopefullyreason some sense into them in reformatting,
(37:52):
because you know, I have tosay that the alternative formats for wine are
something that I believe is going togrow. We already see wine in the
can, We see bag in box, but wine in the can has the
amazing advantage of being single serve,single serve sparkling wine from Oregon in a
can. It's great, right.There's new companies. There's a wonderful one
(38:15):
in Sweden that is buying barrels fromgood producers and canning it and putting the
producer's name on it, and youknow there. And I've had some of
the wines that they're spectacular. SoI think there is extraordinary opportunity for single
serve wine going forward. The waycorbon solves it with benatases, with glass
(38:35):
and screwcap cans are not, unfortunately, able to manage all wines. They
haven't figured out the liner yet.I think once we do, aluminum will
become an extraordinary alternative packaging for allwines because it's light, it's opaque,
and it's fully recyclable. So thewine industry is thinking hard about carbon footprint,
and the vast majority of the carbonfootprint of the wine industry is the
(38:59):
ship of heavy glass bottles all overthe planet. And so with Vintass,
you can ship seven one hundred MILLIONARsamples for the same weight and cost as
one full bottle. And if you'resetting it just for samples for somebody,
they were normally opening it up,drinking a maybe one hundred millioners and giving
the rest of it away or throwingit down the drain. If we can
just drop that carbon footprints, getthem the right amount that they need in
(39:22):
a recyclable glass container, that's whatwe're going to do now. And we're
experimenting with aluminum for ventass as well, because it is such a magical material
if you can get it to work. You know, when we were on
our tour to France, the wholediscussion about packaging was a big one because
a lot of the bottles were beingmade in the Ukraine, yeah, and
they were not able to get outand they were shipment delays. We were
(39:45):
in Champagne and producer was saying itwas taking it three extra months to get
bottles. Everything was being delayed threemonths. So it's a it's a global
issue packaging from sustainability and reducing carbonfootprint because of the heavy bottle shipment,
but also having enough access to it. Given the political issues going on,
they're all weighing into this problem andit takes inventors to and entrepreneurs to help
(40:12):
find solutions. So hopefully, basedon your track record, you and your
team will help do more in thatarea. It's really kind of exacting.
We're working on it. I mean, we're all at our company in love
with the wine industry. And youknow, our product doesn't exist without the
wine producers and importers and distributors andrestaurateurs and consumers, right, But we
use our product ultimately on somebody else'sand if there's some way that we can
(40:35):
help them, because the upside oflighter, durable, long lasting opiate containers
is that it's better in all ways. It decreases their costs, it decreases
their shipping, which is good forthem, and it's better for humanity in
terms of costs. We just haveto make sure that it works, that
that we can sidle right up tothat mister Hook in the seventeenth century England
(40:57):
with cork and glass and try tomake some thing is as spectacularly permanent as
he did. We'll get there.Well, I think that's interesting. I
think knowing you, you will getthere. Well, we'll see it's a
there's a there's a lot of peopleworking on it, which is heartening.
My belief is that if you havea good idea, three other people have
(41:17):
had it at the same time,and it's it says who's working harder on
it and with more focus gets getsthere first. Greg. I feel that
way every day when I come upwith something, whether it's a book title,
and I'm like, damn, somebodydid it. Damn I gotta go
back that drawing where the key is, don't give up, find a new
way, find a new route.Right, that's it. That's it.
(41:37):
I'm in. Corvinus has had itsups and downs. I mean, the
pandemic came and we were selling millionsof dollars a month to restaurants and wine
bars and wineries, and then inApril of twenty twenty, we sold four
hundred and thirty five dollars to thetrade around the world. Right, it
was a bit of a shock thecompanies. Yeah, but we know not
(41:59):
to not to not to mention anotherone of my products. But we we
pivoted and we went to the consumer, and the consumer wanted to not sacrifice
that wonderful restaurant experience at home,and they bought Corvin and Drobes and you
know, it was twenty twenty wasour best year until that point. You
(42:20):
know, we ran all those Instagramlives and we were talking to wineries and
customers around the world. And oneof the things you were talking about the
Ukraine. One of the things thatI've noticed more and more the more I've
traveled with Corvin and with my spinalimplant company is that medical problems are universal,
and wine is universal. You candrink wine the same way in Shanghai
as you do in Taipei, asyou do in Sydney, as you do
(42:42):
in London, as you do inParis, as you do in California,
New York and Texas and you knowChicago. So it's it's a thread that
connects all of us in a verysimilar way. It's a shared experience and
a shared love that's shared in asimilar way by everybody. You know,
we had to wear house and ourdistributor in Ukraine had a warehouse that had
(43:02):
a lot of Corbin in it andan ungodly collection of some of the world's
finest wines. And then the firstweek of the war, it was shelved
by the Russians because he had logisticsthat could get anywhere in the country.
I blew up. They blew upour whole product line and all that wine,
and we had to pull out ofRussia because couldn't sell there anymore given
what they had just done. Andso we're not free of politics. But
(43:25):
I hope as an ultruist, thatpeople recognize their shared experiences, like wine
consumption, like medical problems, thathumanity that led to the first wines being
made in Georgia, Iran or youknow, whoever, whoever wins that argument,
or Greece, and that that that'sa through thread that runs through us
(43:47):
all and all of our cultures,that connects us all enough to divide us.
Wine, as Marquis Dangeville, GianDangeville said to me, as the
most social beverage. And he's right. Speaking of altruism, do you have
any philanthropic initiatives that you are committedto? Yeah, well, we don't
(44:07):
have a foundation. I don't havea foundation, but Corvin makes donations to
all sorts of charities in the wineworld. Reeling forward getting Benjamin's work with
the physically less abled or injured,we've been supporting him. Wine and Wheels
will win and Wheels Wine unify.A big believer in as is the entire
(44:30):
Corban team in our wonderful CEO.There big believer in more diversity in wine.
It's a good career in the restauranttrade. It's a high paying career
in the restaurant trade, and it'sbeen almost exclusively white and male. And
if we can help to break thatgrip on the SMA world, we would
love to be a part of it. We're active in charities, both through
(44:52):
giving in product also during the pandemicand giving in money. Bobby Stuckey was
doing is Independent Restaurant Coalition the IRC, and I remember our largest charitable events.
It was extraordinary. We think wewere doing a dollar per person who
joined Cheers around the world, andwe had a wonderful Australian producer who does
(45:15):
Clonakila. We had Devanique Sanders fromObaye, We had Federico Wineries, we
had Adrian Bridge from Taylor Flaggate Portsand Portugal. You know, all of
us were in lockdown. We wereraising money for Independent Restaurant Coalition and we
did a Cheers around the world andI think we raised around one hundred thousand.
(45:35):
There was way more people. Oursite crashed. It was It was
one of those wonderful connective experiences.Yeah, we do stuff that's in our
industry. Yeah, it's important,you know, it's important to give back,
and because you come from the medicalfield, you're already into that call
to serve. So it's good toknow. Well, Greg, we have
really enjoyed our visit. We've cometo the end, we're almost the end
(45:58):
to wrap. We really appreciate yourtime. We appreciate all you do to
help people and solve problems. Thankyou for including us on that really incredible
dinner, because that's really how wemet and connected with you, and we
hope to stay connected with you.Greg. Absolutely, let's get back together
over some really spectacular still in sparklingwine and go explore this great world what
(46:19):
we've got. We've been speaking withGreg Lambrick, the founder of Corvan,
the inventor of course, with theinventor of Corvan. We've been speaking with
Greg Lambrick, the founder and inventorof Corvan, which really has been a
game changer. It's been great tomeet you and it was great to learn
more about the history over the lastten years of your invention, and we
(46:40):
look forward to seeing what you're goingto do next, because we know something
goods down the road, and we'llbe toasting with you. Thank you very
much, and thank you for allthat you do and all the interesting content
that you give to the wine worldthat gives us the context behind those wonderful
bottles that we all drink. Thankyou, We really appreciate it. So
you've been listening to another of theConnected Table Live with Melanie Young and David
(47:02):
Ransom, and always our messages stayinsatiably curious
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