Evan Wallace, founder of Perlage Systems, remembers the exact moment--12:01 a.m., New Year's Day, 1993—when he first realized his love for champagne and also what sparked his newfound interest: a vintage Krug Rose. "It was like the nectar of the gods," Wallace recalls.
Determined to augment his palate, Wallace set out to taste as many fine sparkling wines as he could. But he discovered that few restaurants poured champagne by the glass because it was not profitable to offer a single serving and throw away the rest of the flattened booze.Wallace made it his personal mission to create a product that would preserve an open bottle of champagne, oxidation be damned. The result is the Perlage System, a durable sheath that Wallace says will keep all kinds of bubbly fresh indefinitely.
While it took 15 years and three models to perfect the system, the technology is simple, Wallace explains. A champagne bottle is placed inside a Lexan casing (the same material used for an astronaut's helmet) and secured with an airtight seal. Once inside, carbon dioxide (CO2) is injected into the bottle until the original pressure of 65 pounds per square inch is reached--as if the bottle were never opened.
Wallace tested his first Perlage models at Wild Ginger, Union and Canlis restaurants in 2003. As 2009 arrived this month, about 75 restaurants in Seattle used the system, he says. Dom Perignon also purchased 2,500 custom-tailored models to accommodate its vintages from 2007 to the present.
Priced at $295 for the consumer model (which uses a hand-held CO2 charger) and $600 for restaurants (which use a separate CO2 tank), the Perlage device can pay for itself in one night, Wallace says. A recent by-the-glass promotion at Canlis paid for its Perlage system within three hours.
Wallace also has been able to patent offshoots of his vision: The Perlini--a martini shaker that adds carbonation to a beverage—can be sampled at Vessel, which offers such fizzy creations as the "Perlini Martini" and "Not a Manhattan."