Tiny bottles a big change at Napa Valley winery

Thousands of people visit the Domaine Carneros Winery each year. Now, the Napa, Calif. winery hopes to extend the experience with new, sample-sized bottle kits that aim to send the tasting room experience home. All without ponying up for a full bottle of untried wine.

But test-driving wine isn't as simple as opening a big bottle and pouring it into a bunch of little ones, says Tim Bucher, CEO and founder of TastingRoom Inc.

For one thing, wine is sensitive to oxygen. So if a little bit is exposed to a lot of oxygen, which is what would happen if you poured wine through a funnel, that will change the character of the wine.

Bucher's process involves a patent-pending technology called Total Anaerobic Sample Transfer Environment - TASTE - that aims to replicate what the winery does on a miniature scale.

Another player in the small-is-big trend is San Francisco-based Crushpad, the do-it-yourself winery where individuals can select fruit and supervise the making of small batches of wine to get the vintner experience without the farming headaches.

Crushpad's "Tiny Bottles," also 50 milliliter, use an oxygen-free transfer system and are being used in conjunction with Brixr, a Web-based tasting service.

At Domaine Carneros, the kits will be available in the Napa Valley tasting room - price about $25 - and also will be offered to wine club members as a convenient, low-cost way to try wines.