France’s Concours Lépine awards an extreme temperature sensor for bottles of wine

n the beginning was a bottle of Château Margaux. Breton sommelier Tegwen Naveos, who sells the Médoc Premier Grand Cru Classé, recalls that “the buyer paid little attention to what might happen to his wines and left the bottles in the boot of his car parked in full sunshine for several hours. I broke out into a cold sweat!” The entrepreneur, who points out that “you never know what a bottle of wine has been through during its lifetime, especially after several decades and multiple owners”, dedicated ten years of his life to creating Beaucarnea.

The device looks like a sundial and is a “capsule sealed in the punt of each bottle of wine which records temperatures irreversibly”. The temperatures are in the bottle’s memory because “a wine which undergoes a significant variation in temperature for several hours, irrespective of whether it is positive or negative, is irremediably affected”, adds the company, referring to an “entirely mechanical system which has no risk of obsolescence and will always be capable of delivering reliable information to the buyer of a Grand Cru in 10, 20 or 50 years’ time, in a very simple way”.

For his “indicator of extreme temperatures for a bottle of wine with non-reversible activation”, Tegwen Naveos was one of the 16 recipients of gold medals at this year’s Concours Lépine, which celebrated its 122nd anniversary on May 7 at the Foire de Paris. The company plans to produce the device industrially starting next September, in Haut-Doubs, eastern France. Its focus is on Grands Crus and other speculative wines and the invention has apparently already prompted interest among estates in Burgundy, with two pre-sales agreements signed in the Côte de Nuits.