Wine Warning:Birthday Hints Ahead
by
Hmmm. Suppose you know a wine girl who’s about to hit a milestone birthday and you’re wondering what to get her. Don’t worry about Le Nez du Vin, she knows it’s too expensive and should make her own aroma kit at some point anyway. But how about a wine preservation system so she stops pouring so much wine down the sink? Or a subscription to Food and Wine, where she would love to have a job one day? Then again, there’s always her hero–Jancis Robinson: her Wine Course dvd, The Oxford Companion to Wine or this one.
Ok, my parents say they read this….a girl’s gotta try.
wine gifts, happiness for wine lovers
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March 16th, 2007 at 8:48 am
::Starts singing:: Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you! (You’re lucky you can’t actually hear this….my voice is terrible!)
March 16th, 2007 at 8:52 am
As a former employee of two well-known kitchen shops, (W.S. and S.L.T.) I have sold a lot of different “wine preservation” tools. It’s amazing how much money people will shell out for gizmos and gadgets. The silliest one was an expensive unit that injected nitrogen into the bottle. The vacuum-units are not much better. All I can say is, they’re all goofy. You don’t need any of that stuff.
Look, here’s what’s happening: You drink a few glasses out of a wine bottle, and now there’s an air space left inside the bottle. So, what do you do? You want to keep the wine from “oxidizing”: You are trying to stop oxygen gas (which is diffused in the wine) from “bubbling” out of the liquid into that air space. The wine loses its flavor after gas-exchange occurs, a.k.a. “spoilage.”
Method 1: Inject Nitrogen. Oh great, now you have filled the air space with nitrogen instead. And this does…? So the oxygen inside the wine will now bubble out and exchange with nitrogen. Woo hoo. Gas exchange still occurs. The result is an air space with oxygen AND nitrogen in it, and wine with less oxygen and more nitrogen now. Price: $100.
Method 2: Replace the air space with a vacuum. People, this is rule #1 from chemistry class: “Molecules flow down the concentration gradient.” So now the oxygen dissolved in the wine comes out FASTER in order to fill the vacuum of pressure in the empty bottle space. When you go scuba diving, and you come up too fast, the gas dissolved in your blood comes out in bubbles too. This is called “The Bends.” If it’s not good for you, it’s probably not good for your wine. Please don’t give your Opus One the bends with a fancy vacuum-toy. Price: $20
Solution: We need to get rid of that air space in the bottle because we don’t want gas-exchange to occur and spoil the wine. So? Get a smaller bottle. Pour the wine into the smaller bottle so there is no air space, and cork it up. Price: Free
Wait… what? Yes, you’ve drunk 2 glasses of wine and now the 750 ml bottle is half full. So, pour the wine into one of those 1/2 bottles like Washington State Ice Wine comes in, and cork it up. There, no pressure difference, no vacuum, no space-age gas-contraptions, and no bother with credit-card bills. In fact, you have ADDED oxygen to the wine by pouring it into the smaller bottle, (which is the whole point of a decanter, is it not?) Simplicity is elegance.
But what if you have 1/2 a glass left over after you pour the wine from the big bottle into a smaller bottle? Just drink it.
There, that’s my ramble on “wine preservation” tools. This information is taught to students every week in the Bruce Cass wine class, which I highly recommend.
http://www.pacrimwine.org/
I found his class highly enjoyable, and they are taught at Fort Mason, in San Francisco.
March 16th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
You’re not really an Aries, are you???