Customer Reviews

Vacu Vin 3-Piece Wine Saver Pump and Stopper, White

5 star:		(113)
4 star:		(31)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Without the VacuVin a bottle of wine presentings a daunting undertaking - are we ready to drink 4-5 glass of wine right now? The VacuVin eliminates this problem by allowing you to remove the air from the bottle after you have opened it, which slows the oxidation which turns the wine sour.

You stick the rubber stopper snuggly into the bottle top, place the VacuVin on top and pump its handle 4-8 times (depending on how empty the bottle is). With each pump, the VacuVin sucks out more air though a narrow slit in the rubber stopper. You can feel the vacuum inside building as each pump takes more effort. The vacuum then holds the slit closed.

The beauty of this, is that it takes no time at all - maybe 15 seconds, tops. With the VacuVin, I've been able to enjoy the same bottle of wine for upwards of a week. One hint for a better vacuum seal, is to run the rubber stopper under water before using it - a little moisture helps achieve a better seal, especially when the rubber stoppers are no longer new.

The main goal in keeping wine "leftovers" is to prevent the wine from aging between the time you open the bottle and when you finish the remaining wine. Air destroys wine, so you need to minimize the air contacat. You also have to keep the wine in the fridge during this time, because 55F is a 'normal aging temperature' and since the air is already aging the wine, you want to minimize *any* other degrading that might go on. Any temperature over 55F will simply make things worse.

The vacu-vin attempts to help by sucking the air out of a half-empty bottle of wine. Note that, instead of the few pumps their literature suggests, you need about 15 pumps to get most of the air out. For many wine types the fact that you are in essence lowering the pressure in the bottle pulls the 'liveliness' out of the wine, which ruins it.

I have done a series of tests for my website comparing both a red and white after 3 days, being stored under a variety of circumstances. The vacu-vin "works" in the sense that it does remove most of the air. However, it was also found to greatly harm some wines - even when you compare its use against a simple cork.

The *ideal* method of saving wine is cheap. Simply put the wine into a smaller glass bottle, cork it, and put it in the fridge. That has the best chance to keep the most common wines for another few days in the best condition. No air at all, no vacuum either. Of course, *no* method will really keep a wine in the same state it started in. You can always cook with the wine on the second day, and move along to your next bottle!

Life is too short to drink bad or old wine :)

I'm continuing to experiment with preserving opened bottles, with various price ranges of wine, and with different wine types....
END

After using my Vacu Vin for a decade or so, I agree that it somewhat prolongs the life of a half-finished bottle of wine. However, I'm ashamed to admit that in all those years I never asked myself the first question that popped into the head of an engineer I know.

When he first saw me using the Vacu Vin he asked me what the gizmo was supposed to do. I told him that it vacuumed the air out of the bottle, removing most of the oxygen that otherwise quickly spoils the wine. After he stopped laughing he asked me a perfectly reasonable question. "Are you trying to tell me that this little plastic pump creates a vacuum in the bottle?"

Well, of course not I said, but it gets most of the air out. Again he laughed, and I started to wonder. Any scientist can tell you that creating a vacuum is no laughing matter - it takes serious horsepower. Human strength and plastic pumps only lower the air pressure a bit, leaving a lot of air behind: they simply cannot create a vacuum.

Thinking back to some pretty fine bottles that had soured in just a day or two with my Vacu Vin, I wondered if I'd been kidding myself all along. Since I didn't know of a viable alternative, maybe I just wanted to believe that it was working? Now that I've found a better answer, I'm sure of it.

Maybe you know that bars and restaurants selling premium wines by the glass often use a gas-replacement system that pumps nitrogen into the bottle as wine is poured out. This keeps oxygen out and protects even very expensive wines until the next time somebody wants a glass - often many days later. The only problem with this near-perfect system is that it's generally too expensive and cumbersome for home use.

That's why most wine shops sell little disposable cylinders of inert gas for that do the very same thing for home users, and do it cheap. One little red bottle of gas costs about ten bucks and protects over 100 bottles of wine - about a dime per use. Just spray this harmless gas (mostly nitrogen, I think) into the open bottle, replace the cork and you've sealed out virtually all the oxygen. As long as the cork is re-insterted tightly it's almost as though you'd never opened the bottle at all.

In casual testing this treatment has preserved very fine wines for well over a week in my house. Since I can't look at an open bottle of wine for more than a few days without finishing it off, I can't say just how long they a bottle might last in the care of someone more restrained. I can say that my wine seems more fresh and alive on second tasting than it did when I relied on my Vacu Vin, and that I can't remember the last one that spoiled.

Actually I can - it had a Vacu Vin stopper in it...

This is a great tool for anyone who likes wine. I use mine all the time. It does preserve wine well and is quite easy to use, but I would encourage you to get extra stoppers and to use only Vacu Vin brand. I've found that other brands don't always work very well.

For red wines at optimal drinking age, don't rely on the vacu vin for more than 1-2 days, 3 at most (and that will be too much for some). You may find that younger wines even benefit from a few days. This is worth trying if you open a bottle and find you don't like it. Or, if it's that bad, preserve it for cooking.

Enjoy!

I find bottles resealed with this vacuum stop to maintain freshness longer than with a cork. Although it depends on the kind of wine, I find the wine is perfectly enjoyable for a couple of days, and in some cases still acceptable within a week. I could never enjoy bottles resealed with cork more than a day after, before started using this product.

However, after experimenting several things, I found a few tips I describe below will help maintaining wine fresher than just using this product without thinking. These steps are unnecessary if you know you will finish the bottle.

1. Chill the bottle before opening. You need to do nothing if the bottle is just out of wine fridge. You can warm the wine in the glass later.

2. Pour chilled wine into glasses just after opening the bottle, and seal the bottle with vacu-vin right away. You can aerate the wine in the glass. If you know you'll have three glasses for yourself, you can even pour into three glasses now! The idea is to minimize the time the wine is exposed to the air.

3. Keep the vacuum sealed bottle refrigerated. However, before drinking, make sure you warm it up to your regular serving temperature (I like most reds at 65-70F) and aerate the wine.
If you serve wine too cold, you may feel it tastes flat and acidy, with less body, and you might incorrectly think this is because of imperfection of the vacu-vin.

Finally, once opened, I don't think any wine can be stored for a long time without losing freshness, and this product is not an exception. It merely helps extending acceptable storage time from one day to a few days.

Read with interest the review by "Mouton45". Obviously a wine connoisseur and, I concede, far more knowledgeable than I. On the other hand, I've drunk my share of wines from fair to very good by any standard. I simply cannot put a bottle of wine away with a meal or even in a day or two. The wine saver is terrific for someone like me, who'd like to be able to enjoy the wine the next day and, yes, next week.

Admittedly the device isn't perfect but it helps a heck of a lot. From a chemist's point of view, the device is remarkably simple and effective. True it does not remove all the oxygen from a wine bottle (by removing the air) but it removes quite a lot. Being skeptical by nature, I conducted a little experiment early on with my wine saver. Take an empty bottle and pump it as empty as you can. Then invert the bottle -- with cork still in the neck -- into a pot of water. THEN pull the cork with the mouth well under water. You'll be astonished at how much water is pulled in to the bottle. Meaning that most of the air (and oxygen) has been removed.

But not perfect -- a little air does remain and that will affect the flavor of the wine eventually. But it drastically reduces the oxygen partial pressure, enormously reduceing the rate at which oxygenation takes place -- and taste degradation takes place. And the device is cheap, simple and reliable for years.

Other devices? You can buy a small can of compressed nitrogen gas -- smaller than a can of hairspray. Spray a small blast of nitrogen thru a tube inserted to just over the surface of the wine, remove the tube and re-cork. Displaces most of the air in the bottle. They cost $10 or $15 per can and eventually run out of gas. I was told by a local fine wine proprieter that its about as effective as the wine saver.

Lastly, your wine saver pump can be attached to a specially made container (looking much like typical plastic fridge storage containers) and most of the air can be removed from your pate' or spaghetti sauce. For quick to spoil foods that you'd like to store for awhile but not freeze, it reduces oxidative damage and retards growth of many spoilage organisms.

If you truly want a easy to use wine saver that works this is the one to buy! It is the only one that I have found that keeps my open bottles of wine from spoiling. My friends have loved receiving them as house warming gifts too! This is one product that has live up to it's name "Wine Saver!"

I have heard both the praises and the criticisms of this little device, but let me tell you - it definitely does help wine stay enjoyable longer than simply re-corking. Of course, no open bottle of wine will keep indefinitely, but with VacuVin, a bottle that has been open for 2 or 3 days tastes as good or better than one that has been open for only 24 hours without it. Even with VacuVin, 3-4 days is about as long as I would recommend keeping an open bottle, but they sure taste better within those 3-4 days with VacuVin than with just a cork.

As a former wine writer, I feel I have to provide some caveats about the Vacu Vin. I have been using this device for over ten years now. Its claim of keeping wines fresh to up to 2 weeks is grossly exaggerated, even under ideal situations. The moment you uncork a wine, the wine begins to change because of its contact with air. Add that to the fact that the Vacu Vin does not really extract all the air out of the bottle (as tested by a lab), an opened and Vacu-vin'd bottle of wine continues to oxidate, albeit at a much slower pace. This device works best with white wines that will be kept in the fridge. The lower temperature greatly reduces the pace of oxidation. Most white wines, unless they are old and fragile, will be drinkable and enjoyable for one or two days after being pumped, maybe three if you are lucky. How much wine is left in the bottle is also important. If there are only a couple on inches of wine left, there is a lot of air space for the Vacu Vin to pump out, so the chance of the wine remaining drinkable will be much less. Some also find that repumping on a daily basis, even if you do not open the seal, can prolong the longevity of the wine in the bottle. For red wines kept in room temperature, one day is usually the most you can expect. The wine will turn more tannic and hollow, since the fruit and acidity of a wine are usually diminished the quickest after exposure to oxygen. There have been many studies done on the various wine preservation devices. The Vacu Vin is generally regarded in the "limited effectiveness" category, but the low cost makes it a "worthwhile thing to have" class. I would certainly recommend it for white wines, just drink up the rest quickly, preferrably within a day or so.

I bought my Vacu Vin set about 4 years ago and it's still working perfectly. It's so easy to use and it does preserve the wine flavor for at least a few days. We no longer have to finish a whole bottle in one sitting or risk a spoiled wine. I've recommended it to a few of my friends and they all say they can't live without it now.

Few things of note:

* Even with Vacu Vin, the wine will start to change flavor if kept over a week.

* You do need to pump a lot more than the instruction indicates. Keep pumping until you feel a strong resistance.

* Vacu Vin cannot be used for wines with fizz (such as Vino Verde, Champagne, etc). The reduced pressure will suck the gas out of the wine and make it flat very quickly.

* It's better to keep the bottle upright so there's no pressure on the rubber stopper (It does not need to stay moist like a cork).

Its purpose is to keep a leftover wine until you finish it, and it does that quite well.