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398 of 434 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
I used to love it, August 10, 2001
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...
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