Jul 22, 2026 · 39 min · 15 segments
What do chemotherapy needles, Michelin-starred restaurants and a bottle of Bordeaux have in common? More than you'd think. This week AJ Sharp meets Greg Lambrecht, the inventor of Coravin—the…
Greg LambrechtGuest
AJ SharpHost
I sort of fell into Corvin trying to solve my own problems, not realizing it was a problem that was commonly experienced all over the world.
The problem with the really nice high-end wines, as we know, wine goes off as soon as you've opened it.
I grew up in Southern California and had my first wine illegally up in Napa Valley when I was 16 years old and absolutely fell in love with it.
And I was really frustrated that in order to taste a wine, I had to open it and commit to that wine.
And I'm committing to 750 milliliters that I had to drink before I went to the next wine.
And so, you know, that frustration peaked when my wife at the time was pregnant with our second child and stopped drinking.
And so, you know, I developed this chemotherapy delivery system when I was at Pfizer a long time ago.
And it involved a needle that went into an implant that was placed underneath the skin to inject chemotherapy over the course of somebody's treatment.
And so I'd gotten really good at needles that were sharp but didn't do damage to things that they went through.
And, you know, ultimately that desire to be able to drink wine by the glass without committing to the whole bottle.
led to this invention back in 1999, where I basically took one of my chemotherapy needles and went through the cork and tried to figure out how to get the wine to want to leave.
And, you know, I often think that my ability to invent something like Coravin came from not being from the industry.
I sort of fell into Corvin trying to solve my own problems, not realizing it was a problem that was commonly experienced all over the world.
The problem with the really nice high-end wines, as we know, wine goes off as soon as you've opened it.
I grew up in Southern California and had my first wine illegally up in Napa Valley when I was 16 years old and absolutely fell in love with it.
And I was really frustrated that in order to taste a wine, I had to open it and commit to that wine.
And I'm committing to 750 milliliters that I had to drink before I went to the next wine.
And so, you know, that frustration peaked when my wife at the time was pregnant with our second child and stopped drinking.
And so, you know, I developed this chemotherapy delivery system when I was at Pfizer a long time ago.
And it involved a needle that went into an implant that was placed underneath the skin to inject chemotherapy over the course of somebody's treatment.
And so I'd gotten really good at needles that were sharp but didn't do damage to things that they went through.
And, you know, ultimately that desire to be able to drink wine by the glass without committing to the whole bottle.
led to this invention back in 1999, where I basically took one of my chemotherapy needles and went through the cork and tried to figure out how to get the wine to want to leave.
And, you know, I often think that my ability to invent something like Coravin came from not being from the industry.
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