Vacu Vin 3-Piece Wine Saver Gift Pack, White

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...


Slightly helps some wines, completely destroys others   November 2, 2000
Lisa Shea
273 out of 300 found this review helpful

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





Enjoy the same bottle today and tomorrow.   May 30, 2000
wcc2 (Washington DC)
77 out of 81 found this review helpful

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.


An essential item when you don't want to drink it all now   June 27, 2000
Meriah L. Crawford (Doswell, VA USA)
40 out of 41 found this review helpful

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!


Simple and effective solution for unfinished bottles   August 11, 2001
Ryuji Suzuki (Cambridge, MA USA)
27 out of 28 found this review helpful

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.