Wine Preservation: Tom Lutz, Repour

XChateau is a podcast about all things wine, from vine to your glass. We tackle the business of wine and keep you up to date with new and exciting developments in the wine industry.

In this episode, Robert Vernick and Peter Yeung interview Tom Lutz, Founder & Creator of Repour Wine Saver, one of the leading new inventions in wine preservation technology.  We discuss the technology, how people have learned about it, the differences between Coravin and Repour, and what the future holds.  

Other topics covered in this episode include:

• Tom is a chemist by trade (worked in biodiesel, aquarium products)
• Repour was invented when he had a newborn son and ended up pouring half bottles of wine down the drain.
• Technology: 
  • Uses food grade oxygen absorbers
  • Binds the oxygen, of which the atmosphere has 21%, does not replace it.
  • Requires air to exchange and remove the oxygen, so the bottle needs to be stored vertically
• The capacity of the stopper
  • Built for 5 pours of one bottle, glass by glass - this would expose the wine to 1,500 ml of air.
  • The max amount a stopper has to handle is 2,000 ml of air.
• Uses recyclable materials. However, many municipal grids have 3”x3” grids that filter out small objects; for large customers, they do take back repours to recycle
• Pricing
  • Consumer: 4-pack ($8.99 / $2.25 each), 10-pack ($17.99 / $1.80 each), 72-pack ($120 / $1.67 each)
  • There are often promotions via the email list.
  • The future target price point is $1/stopper or lower.
  • Trade: 4x72-pack (288 stoppers) - starts at $0.83 / stopper
• Customers 
  • Started with on-premise (restaurants)
  • With COVID - moved more to consumers.
  • Wineries - have been using for virtual tastings and wine club gifts, also several doing custom branding.
• Coravin vs. Repour - both work. 
  • Coravin is better for tasting and cellaring wine.  
  • Repour is for enjoying wine like you normally would and saving the remainder of the bottle for later.
• Marketing 
  • Mostly word of mouth
  • After 1 year of testing the science, Tom started with a local sommelier group that did a blind tasting, and Repour worked great.
  • TEXSOM - gave out samples, and many conversations have come back to that event
• Duration of effectiveness - weeks or months, Repour has tested out to 6-7 months.
• The Future - potentially replaceable inserts, sparkling wine and possibly showing how much oxygen-absorbing capacity is left.

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