Wine Sediments

Over the past couple weeks, three different gadgets crossed my IntarTubes and I really wanted to share them, if only because I could get a laugh out of one of them.

First, the laugh.

We all know that wines should be served at certain temperatures. Reds should, generally, be a little chilled, 5-10F below room temperature. Whites well chilled, along with Rosé. In fact, there’s a whole device dedicated to getting your wine to the proper temperature. The Waring Pro Wine Chiller. But, actually, that’s not what I wanted you to join me in laughing at.

Gaze upon the majesty of of Infrared Wine Thermometer/Waiter Corkscrew. Here’s the conversation the better half and I had[1]:

Her: Check this thing out! You could blog about it at Wine Sediments.

Me: Interesting. I’m not sure I could get a post out of that..

Her: I dunno, it is wine related. Save it for some week you don’t have anything else to blog about.

Me: Yeah, I guess I could do that. Wow. That thing is expensive.

Her: They probably shouldn’t have paired it with a wine that costs half the price.

I stared at the bottle. Sure enough, that appears to be a bottle of Silver Oak (a nice little wine if ever there was one) and, sure enough again, they normally go for around $60/bottle.

Now, I’m sure this little corkscrew works well for what it does. But lets consider the pieces of this:

IR Thermometer. You can find one of these for $30 or so.

Waiter’s Corkscrew. So, sure, I found one for $200, but really, these things run around $2.00.

So, that $120 corkscrew is essentially made from a $30 health gadget merged with a $5 corkscrew.

Madness. Maybe the reason they picked the Silver Oak is to show you how much it costs to make the device…

Next, something not quite so funny.

Cork.

While you can prove anything with statistics, they say that corks have anywhere from a 5% to 15% failure rate in protecting wine. Maybe the problem is with the owners not caring for the bottles well enough, for instance, not storing wine on the side so the cork remains moist or storing it in a fridge or other dry space where, even with it on its side, the cork can still dry out. And I won’t even get into the whole question of recorking old wines[2].

So, that led wineries to head towards synthetic corks and twist tops Stelvin tops. But I was recently turned onto a local winery here in Washington, Syncline, that has moved over to the Vino-Lok glass stopper.

I’ve been trying to find a bottle with these corks, but it makes me a little sad.

What does this mean for the future of Wine Cork Trivets? Or another one of the good uses for cork, mulch on house plants (yes, really!)? Or, even, the Iberian Lynx and Iberian imperial eagle?

Regardless, I’m on the hunt for a Vino-Lok’ed wine and will be sure to post about it once I’ve found one.
[1] Note: all conversations have been enhanced for entertainment value. Like most comfortable, loving couples, most conversation is unspoken and shared in a common thought-space, and spoken words are generally kept to short, mono-syllabic bursts. In a good way.

[2] Ok, I’ll get into it. Some people feel that as wine ages, it should be recorked as the cork has a limited life span. Not obscenely short, but, every 20 years or so. Others feel that topping off a bottle with possibly an incorrect wine is a danger. Me? I don’t expect to have wines lasting over 20 years. And if I ever do get obscenely rich where I can afford an old, old wine, I’ll buy it to drink, not to store.

Corkscrew photo care of Hammacher Schlemmer.

Vino-Lok photo care of http://www.vino-lok.de/