Archive for April, 2009

wine_preserverWhat kills a good wine is air – oxygen. A little is good, but a lot is bad. That’s why when you leave a wine open on the counter overnight, it usually tastes terrible the next day.

Ever see those restaurants with fancy wine dispensing setups that have bunches of tubes connected to bottles with little spickets? Well, assuming you don’t have thousands of dollars for that, the next best thing is Private Preserve.

Essentially, what the fancy restaurant setup does is reduces or eliminates the amount of air/oxygen in an open wine bottle. They displace the air with a noble gas, which is heavier than air, and won’t oxidize the wine. That’s what Private Preserve does for the home wine drinker.

We’ve gotten an extra few days from an open bottle of wine – red or white – with wine gassing. While it’s not full proof, wine gassing is certainly better than simply corking the bottle or the “vacuum” type systems which try to extract air from a bottle.

The gas cans usually cost about 10 bucks and seem lighter than air. But you get dozens of uses from one can. Like the Screwpull and Wine Aerator, any wine drinker needs Private Preserve.

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screwpull-leverBe prepared to throw out your French corkscrew after reading this (or any other kind) – you’ll never need it again.

About 10 years ago, my wife and I were part-time bartenders for weddings. We opened a lot of wine. Of course, we started using the standard issue French corkscrew, then migrated to other styles. But when you need to open dozens of bottles in a few hours, those didn’t cut it.

Then I recalled the Screwpull wine opener I had at home (this was before we were regular wine snobs). I had received it for a gift a few years earlier and recalled its ease of use. Cut the foil, place Screwpull of the bottle top, clamp the handles with one hand, push the lever with the other, then pull up!

I brought the Screwpull to a one of the weddings I worked – wow, that was the money. So much so, the owners bought a drawer full of these lever corkscrews for the entire team.

But when you open that many bottles, you need something durable. It was clear that the more expensive Screwpull (usually two to three times more than the knockoffs) was outlasting the cheaper Rabbit and other brands. As a matter of fact, I still have and use that original Screwpull today – after 10 years!

So don’t waste your money on the cheaper brands – for ease of use and durability, the Screwpull could be the last wine opener you ever buy.

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