Product Update
Is Wine Balloon Still in Business? (2026 Update)
Is Wine Balloon from Shark Tank still around in 2026? The deal it made, the sharks who invested, and where to buy Wine Balloon today.
The Wine Balloon produced one of the strangest deals in early Shark Tank history: Eric Corti asked for 40,000 dollars and ended up agreeing, on air, to sell Mark Cuban his entire company for 400,000 dollars. Then he went home to Mason, Ohio, thought about it, and refused to sign. Fourteen years later that decision looks pretty good, because the gadget, long since renamed Air Cork, is still on sale from the same little company Corti kept.
The Short Answer
Yes, the business behind the Wine Balloon is alive in 2026, operating under the name Air Cork. The store at aircork.com is live and sells the wine preserver for 28.50 dollars with free shipping and a pack of three spare balloons included. The company still lists its Mason, Ohio address, the same town Corti pitched from in Season 3.
So if you searched for Wine Balloon and found nothing, that is the reason. The product survived, the name did not. Air Cork is the same grape-shaped balloon on a hand pump, dropped into an open bottle and inflated to sit directly on the wine's surface so oxygen cannot flatten what is left.
The Shark Tank Pitch
Corti appeared in Season 3, Episode 4, which aired in February 2012, back when the show's deals were routinely small and scrappy. He was a hobbyist inventor from Mason, Ohio with a wine accessory that solved oxidation mechanically instead of with vacuum pumps or argon sprays.
The ask was tiny by Tank standards: 40,000 dollars for 30 percent, valuing the whole company at about 133,000 dollars. That modest number is what set up the fireworks, because the sharks decided the product was worth more than the founder was asking.
The Deal That Got Done, Then Undone
Mark Cuban went the unusual route of offering to buy the company outright: 400,000 dollars for 100 percent, ten times the cash Corti had requested, with the founder walking away entirely. Corti said yes on the floor, and the moment became one of the era's most replayed negotiations.
After taping, Corti backed out. Coverage of the company, including recaps in Mashed and Food Republic, describes him concluding that a full buyout undervalued what the product could become and choosing to keep building it himself. Agreements struck on the show are not binding until due diligence and paperwork finish, and this one simply never finished.
The Quiet Rebrand to Air Cork
The name change came after Corti took the product onto Invention Hunters, a Food Network show, and rebranded the Wine Balloon as Air Cork. The new name describes the mechanism better, an air-filled cork replacing the one you pulled, and it is the identity the company has sold under ever since.
The business has stayed deliberately small and direct. One core product, spare balloon packs as the consumable, a simple website, and a design pitch that has not needed to change: no vacuum to lose suction, no gas canisters to replace, just a food-grade balloon keeping air off your wine. Tracking sites have floated revenue figures for the company over the years, but none are verifiable, and the honest description is a durable single-product operation.
Wine Balloon net worth in 2026
There is no credible net worth figure for Air Cork. The only hard valuations ever attached to the business are the 133,000 dollars implied by Corti's original ask and the 400,000 dollars Cuban offered for all of it in 2012. Everything since is private.
What is safe to say is that Corti declined 400,000 dollars and then ran the company for well over a decade, which strongly suggests the product earned him more than the buyout would have. Any specific figure beyond that would be fabricated.
Where Things Stand Now
Eric Corti pitched the Wine Balloon for 40,000 dollars at 30 percent, accepted Mark Cuban's 400,000 dollar buyout on camera, killed the deal afterward, and rebuilt the product as Air Cork.
In 2026 the balloon is still going into bottles. You can buy one today at aircork.com for under 29 dollars, spare balloons included, shipped from the same Ohio operation that turned down the easiest exit in Shark Tank history.
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Where to buy Wine Balloon
Still selling as of August 7, 2026. Check today's price and availability.
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See the full Wine Balloon deal breakdown and term sheet →
