If you’re like me, it is a rare day when we have leftover wine. Actually, that’s not entirely true – I often have leftover wine. Until the next day! If you’re not like me however, and you need to preserve your wine for a day or more, and protect it from the elements, you might need a way to keep those flavors in tact as you work your way through the bottle.
I recently had the chance to try a new wine preservation system, The Wine Shield. This oddly strange looking device literally covers the wine in the bottle, forming a barrier to the air that can damage (ok fine change) the wine.
I will admit, when I first got the package I was skeptical. I am a VacUVin user, and have been since I started drinking wine. I couldn’t figure out how a system that doesn’t take the air OUT of the bottle was actually going to work.
How does it do it? Well, these clear plastic disks, just slightly thicker than saran wrap really, are packed up neatly in a sleeve. YOu insert them in the bottle with a special dohicky and if all goes right – it deploys and lays flat on top o the wine, preventing any oxygen from getting to the surface area. Essentially, it’s a clear, disposable cork.
Did it work? Actually, yes. It did work. I left a bottle open (but corked) for three days, and tasted it along the way. While it wasn’t as fresh as a daisy on the third day, it was definately better than just leaving the cork in. At $10 for a pack of ten, it’s a buck a pop to preserve your wine. Will I give up my vacuvin? Probably not. The idea of throwing away the disks every time seems wasteful; however put against ruining a great bottle of $50 wine, it’s change. However, the use of the vacuvin requires that you hav multiple rubber stoppers, and a big arm muscle. That said, you can reuse them ad infinitum.
The best way to preserve your wine in my opinion is to drink it! Barring that, an inert gas system that displaces the air with argon or nitrogen. The catch with inert gas systems is that they are costly and can be difficult (see my review coming up!). For day to day use, The Wine Shield is a great gadget.
‘Grade: B+. Give em a try! Final thoughts – it had about the same results as the VacUVin, but was a bit harder to get the hang of. If you are opening a lot of bottles, say for a tasting, it’s a great way to preserve them. Would I buy more? You bet!
I use the Rabbit and just love how it preserves my wine for the next day. Regardless of what you use people use something to preserve that grape juice. Thanks for sharing Thea!
Hi Dan!
The rabbit is the same technology as the VacuVin. I agree however, just don't waste that juice!
I'm going to do more experiments and see if I can tell the difference between vacuuming and the WineShield
Hi,
As founder and ceo thanks for the review.
We are about to make a number of positive changes, as we have had great feedback from the market such as the comments you have made.
Volume price to restaurants will be 30c and to consumers will be 50c.
Our tests have shown that our product, which can be recycled, at 0.42grams is 500 times more carbon efficient than wasting a glass of wine.
In terms of the competition the reviewers tell us that the vac pumps pull the aroma and volatiles from the wine, so our approach is to lock them in, and in the case of argon, as it is heavier than air, it goes into the glass when poured, and the consumer ingests it.
Once again, thanks very much for the constructive review, Cheers Barry Rees.
Great points Barry!
I’m personally don’t notice vacuum pumps impacting the wine, but my palate is admittedly not as fine tuned as some other wine drinkers. I am going to do some tasting on that one!
I never thought of ingesting the argon, but now that you pointed it out I think I’ll be steering clear of that! I love your point about the carbon impact of other tools – this is a fantastic selling point. But, who would waste wine! Gasp!
Cheers and I look forward to getting better at Wine Shield application!