Wine Accessories

You can't just buy a $5 cork screw and be done with it.   Noooo, this is capitalism at work!    There are a ton of accessories you can buy to go with your drinking habit.   Some make sense.

Bottle Openers

There are the waiter's pull (a standard screw pull), Ahsos, and Rabbit (lever) pulls.   Now there's even electric ones where you just push a button.

You should have a waiter's pull and an Ahso (sometimes called a two-prong cork puller).

The waiter's pull works great for most everything.  The two-prong puller is great for older wines with soft, dry corks where putting a thread into them will just make the cork disintegrate.  The two-prong pulls don't work well for synthetic corks.

I also use the lever-style screw pull because it's easy.

Most of the other types either don't work well or are expensive.   There are numerous different takes on the basic screw-type puller with different handles that you pull down or push up and it doesn't matter because none work as well as those pictured above.

Of course, the best idea is to just use screw caps!


Wine Preservatives

If you have a partially full bottle you let lots of oxygen get in contact with the wine. O2 is the enemy because it will spoil your wine in a short time.    There are two schools of thought to prevent this:  remove the oxygen or put a heavier than air neutral gas on top of the wine in the bottle to insulate the wine from the oxygen.

The vacuum pumps are cheap and you never run out of anything (like argon gas).   The only problem is that don't work well.

The other option is to buy cans of gas that you spray into the bottle.

Or a better option may be to just finish off the bottle and take a couple aspirin before going to bed!

I've seen fancy preservative systems that control the temperature and pump gas into the bottles that cost over $200.

Wine Mellowers

I'm not sure what else to call these items that are meant to smooth out a young wine.   Decanting is the obvious way to do this.   Tumbling the wine and getting air to it mellows the wine.  Essentially, your ageing the wine in a few seconds.   You can pour the wine in to almost any clean container, preferably a glass one, but of course, you can buy a $75 crystal decanter.

Fairly new on the market are the wine aerators where you pour from the bottle directly into your glass through this funnel that has little air tubes (venturis) running through it.   These are more convenient than decanters and they work.    But decanters have another use--getting sediment out of your wine.

If you primarily drink younger wines the aerators is the way to go.  If you drink older wine then get the decanter.

There are numerous other gizmos to stick in your wine that will magically age your wine in seconds.  These are most likely snake oil.

Palate Cleansers

Drinking too much young red wine, such as when you're out visiting wineries or at a wine tasting event can lead to what's called palate fatigue.   Your mouth just gets too tired to taste wine anymore.   Bread and sparkling water do a decent job of reviving your taste buds.    There's a new product specifically designed for this and it does a good job.   It's a sort of a sparkling water with "secret ingredients" that seem to really work called SanTasti.

Other Crap

Don't forget the wine racks, 18 different kinds of Riedel glassware, coolers, foil cutters, champagne stoppers, blah, blah, blah.

My favorite, after years of being told to hold the wine glass by the stem so as not to transfer body heat to the wine, is Riedel's stemless wine glass.  This is their Pinot Noir tumbler.   Yes, it's expensive.   But hey, if you're a clumsy drunk maybe it'll keep you from knocking over your wine glass.

Yeah, this one's for Pinot Noir only.    Don't let me catch you drinking Sauvignon Blanc out of this thing!