Garage Band: Cedar Rapids man’s device keeps wine fresh to the last glass

A new product from a Corridor start-up is attracting attention before it officially hits the market.

The Repour Smart Stopper continuously removes oxygen from the air above the wine in a bottle and from the wine itself, keeping the beverage fresh weeks or months after the bottle has been first opened.

Tom Lutz, who has a Ph.D. in chemistry and previously has worked in product development, came up with the idea for Repour several years ago.

'I was lying on my couch one night thinking that I needed a problem to solve,” Lutz said. ”I don't know if I had recently poured out half of a bottle of wine, but I started thinking about why wine goes bad after you open the bottle.

'Oxygen helps give the wine its taste, but it also can destroy it once the wine is exposed to the air. By putting our FDA-approved oxygen absorbing material in the stopper, we can bring the level of oxygen in the air down below 0.05 percent and the dissolved oxygen in the wine to less than 0.03 parts per million.”

Lutz said each Repour stopper will keep one bottle of wine fresh until the last glass. Repour has a seal that must be removed before inserting the stopper into the neck of the bottle.

'The seal preserves the oxygen-absorbing qualities of the material,” Lutz said.

Lutz said Repour has been rigorously tested, including the use of a third-party laboratory that verified the product's claims. The testing confirmed that wine sealed with the Repour stopper measured dissolved oxygen in the wine to less than 0.03 ppm.

Lutz also has handed out prototypes of Repour to wine experts such as vineyard owners, wine distributors, specialty shop wine owners, restaurateurs and hundreds of wine enthusiasts to validate internal tests. He assembled the stoppers in his garage from injection molded plastic parts fabricated by BeraTek Industries of Cedar Rapids.

Jeff Quint, owner of Cedar Ridge Vineyards in Swisher, has been an expert tester for Repour.

'Here at Cedar Ridge, we close on Sunday and reopen on Wednesdays,” Quint said. ”We have to pour hundreds of dollars of wine down the drain in between.

'With Repour, we can replace the cork with the smart stopper when we leave on Sunday. When we return on Wednesday, the wine is as fresh as it is when we first opened them.”

Quint's confidence in the science and his own testing convinced him to provide a testimonial for a Kickstarter campaign in October 2016 to help support early production start-up costs.

Curt Nelson, president and CEO of the Entrepreneurial Development Center in Cedar Rapids, said the successful Kickstarter campaign brought Repour to the attention of international specialty retailers.

'Businesses like Harrods of London and Sharper Image catalog surf Kickstarter to find the next new product,” Nelson said. 'When they started calling Tom, his ability to go real slow at first becomes a problem. They want to go fast at first.”

Lutz said production tooling has been ordered, and final assembly and shipping may need to be handled by BeraTek and possibly another 'co-packer” to meet anticipated demand.

'Our plan is that we will be fully ready to go by March 1,” Lutz said. 'We will offer Repour as a single, as well as in a four-pack or six-pack for the average consumer. We may also offer a larger multi-pack with over 100 pieces for bars and restaurants.”

Lutz said Repour initially will be sold in wine shops and by similar retailers. Asked if it ultimately may be more widely available - at Costco and Sam's Club or large big-box stores such as Target and Wal-Mart - Lutz said it's too early to speculate.

”We really don't know where we will end up,” he said. 'Time will tell.”

What is 'Garage Band”?

'Garage Band” is a new every-other-week feature for Business 380 about the entrepreneurial process. Somewhere between the inspiration and the start-up. Send your suggestions for businesses we should feature in 'Garage Band” to michaelchevy.castranova@thegazette.com.