March 15 2010
When I get an email from a friend saying, “You should check this out” it tends to pique my interest, especially when the subject is wine preservation.
First, I should say I’m an avowed Vacu Vin user. With a wife that’s nearly a teetotaler, and a constant flux of six to eight bottles of opened wine in the fridge, a Vacu Vin and a wine crock started with a vinegar mother is de rigueur for any self-respecting wine taster, as important as having a corkscrew, and especially important if you’re a wine taster that likes to play the field across a number of different bottles, similar to fiddling with your iPod to match your mood.
Pouring a week old wine into crocks (before the bottle hits the recycling bin or gets upcycled into drinking glasses) that turn the bottle remnants into wine vinegar (red and white) definitely soothes any anxiety from watching a wine circle the drain, the Vacu Vin notwithstanding.
So, when the tip came for the Platypus “PlatyPreserve” wine preserver I took heed.
The Platypus, familiar to campers and outdoorsman, is a reputable water carrier noted for its durability, its malleability in your pack, and the fact that it doesn’t pick up or throw off scents—meaning that the container that carries orange juice today can carry water tomorrow without cross-flavor contamination.
For its part, the PlatyPreserve is a wine-centric brand extension from the Platypus water carrier and technology. Made in the U.S. and just slightly bigger than a 750ml bottle of wine, the wine preserver has received rave consumer reviews on Amazon.com and other outlets. And, at $9.95 for one, it pays for itself for the wine enthusiast who winces with reticence at willfully pouring leftover wine into a vinegar crock or down the drain.
Likewise, if you’re an outdoor enthusiast, the PlatyPreserve could make a willing companion for some vino at the end of the day, when a proper bottle may be cumbersome to carry in pack or, at the least, from hither and yon.
One user at Amazon.com said of the PlatyPreserve, “I have used every form of wine preserving system out there: vacuum pumps, nitrogen tanks/taps etc. etc. This one beats them all cheaply and simply, by doing better what they all attempt to do, that is, prevent contact between wine and oxygen as much as possible.”
I decided to take the test myself.
I picked up five bottles of an inexpensive red wine – the Beringer Stone Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon, found for $4.99 a bottle. I suppose if I wanted to be thematically correct I could have chosen the Redwood Creek, positioned as an outdoorsman wine, but when $5 bottles are the game I don’t get choosy.
I placed one full bottle into a PlatyPreserve, a half bottle into a second PlatyPreserve, a half bottle under Vacu Vin, and a half bottle under regular cork and put it into the fridge for seven days to see what would happen.
I blind tasted each of the wines against a control bottle that was freshly opened.
The results of the blind tasting were somewhat of a surprise: a wine under Vacu Vin was the only bottle I guessed correctly, but the results also indicated optimism for the PlatyPreserve.
My notes said:
Control bottle (freshly opened): Bright cherry, blackberry, candied nose – Dr. Pepper flavors, bubblegum cotton candy, vanilla Stoli vodka and brown sugar. A fruit and oak wine, sweet, manipulated with an artificial finish. Drinkable at the end of the night.
Wine #1 (Under Vacu Vin): Nose is reductive with stewed flavors. Wine is starting to unravel with fruit minimized and acid coming to the front. Still drinkable and inoffensive.
Wine #2 (Full PlatyPreserve): Closest to control. Nose minimized slightly. Palate is still together and pleasant.
Wine #3 (Beringer under cork): Nose is gone, reductive and stewed. Oxidized.
Wine #4 (1/2 full PlatyPreserve): Nose is gone, alcohol and wood with faint blackberry. Oxidized.
Lessons learned: The wine under cork and the ½ full PlatyPreserve had virtually identical flavor profiles—both wines were shot. The full PlatyPreserve was in good shape and the wine under a Vacu Vin was in reasonably good shape. Given this, the natural comparison needs to be made with the Vacu Vin versus the ½ full PlatyPreserve and on that count the Vacu Vin wins handily.
And, of course, if you’re at home drinking, I can’t imagine why you would need to store a full bottle in a PlatyPreserve.
My overall recommendation: Use a Vacu Vin for home purposes while the PlatyPreserve makes a suitable airtight companion for day hikes, short overnight camping trips and when lugging a glass bottle is impractical.
Posted in, The Week in Wine. Permalink | Comments (28) |
Thomas,
I don’t think you missed anything, generally speaking. The biggest difference is the Vacu Vin version held up reasonably well (one week opened on a $5 wine). #3 and #4 weren’t particularly potable.
So, overall, the Vacu Vin did a reasonably solid job, as it normally does. The full bottle in the Wine Platypus came out great, but for home use when are you ever going to need to put a full bottle into it for short-term storage?
My takeaway? The Wine Platypus goes into the arsenal if I ever want to take some vino somewhere in something other than a bottle. The Vacu Vin reigns supreme for home use.
Jeff
I like reviews like thi because I’ve been meaning to buy a Vacu Vin because we have more and more wine open for 2-3 days at a time. Thanks for you take on the whole thing.
Josh
Jeff, I’m surprised you did not use inert gas preservation. In my testing, it did much better than any vacuum pump.
And incidentally, some wines will fare better than others. I suppose it could be shown that some wines made in a particular way (say, to be more or less long-loved or those made from different varieties) would fare differently that others when tested with the same preservation method.
Ultimately, whenever I saw winemakers re-seal a barrel, I never saw them using a vacuum. I did see large tanks of inert gases being used, tho.
My many tests of the VacuVin simply don’t bear much fruit (pardon the pun) as opposed to refrigeration or nitrogen. But my tests were always for at least half full bottles and for no more than two days storage, which, in my view, is the outside limit for storing opened wine.
Thomas, as a rule, two days is a good rule.
However, I just finished tasting a Napa cab that I was sent as a sample and the wine was singing at 6 (or 7?) days after opening.
What dose that say about that wine (or its peers for that matter?)
Hi Arthur,
Thanks for the comment. I’m sure gas on the order of Private Preserve:
http://www.privatepreserve.com/
Is a dandy solution, I just haven’t used it.
Thomas—I reco vacu vin and the refrigerator. Not all wines, but most can get five days without a depreciable loss of quality, provided you only open it once, maybe twice, in that time. At least that’s what I’ve found.
But, you have both spurred me to buy some Private Preserve, too.
Arthur,
A wine that needs almost a week to sing after opening probably should not have been released so early or opened so young.
Jeff,
Five days and no depreciable loss? Hmmm. They don’t call me doubting Thomas for nothing…
Doubting Thomas 
—take a big Napa Cab and instead of decanting, let it unfold under vacu vin in the fridge.
For the Rockaway from Rodney Strong, I can give witness to Arthur’s assertion that certain wines bloom over the course of the week. it was drinking like a champ ...
Jeff and Arthur: imagine the real potential of a wine that needs a week to open up.
Of course, we are not talking about wines like that on an everyday basis, unless you get them for free to write about on your blog…;)
Have considered using a .375 bottle to store wine for a day or a week? I have had a lot of success with this method, with only a few failures with bottles held over a week.
Ken
In fact, Ken, my preferred method is to pour into a smaller vessel or freeze it. But I don’t get to do either often, since I rarely have opened bottles around for more than a day. I question the dedication of those who do…
Thomas, it was an ‘06 from Spring Mountain. I’s not on the producer’s web site yet. But your comment raises this question: how long should a producer hold a wine if it has the potential to cellar for 2-3 decades?
Arthur,
There was a time—a long time ago—when wine producers did not concern themselves too much with the cost of holding inventory. They waited a while before releasing their gems.
It wasn’t until the late 18th century, I believe, when producers started to realize it was better to let the consumer hold the inventory—also, better techniques gave us longer-lived wines, and so cellaring became the rage.
For financial reasons, it’s much better for producers to get the stuff out of their inventory and into our hands. They should hold the wines as long as they can afford to hold them. The question is is not how long the producer should hold the wine, but how long the consumer is willing to tie up the money in inventory.
Of course, for those bombastic wines that are fruit and tannic forward yet questionable regarding age-worthiness, it’s everyone’s crap shoot.
Thomas:
“For financial reasons, it’s much better for producers to get the stuff out of their inventory and into our hands”
Of course, especially since most wine growing regions in CA (and possibly other parts of the New World) get quite toasty in the summer and the energy costs of climate controlled storage can be prohibitive. That and the tendency of the majority of the general wine buying public’s disinterest in ageing wines probably lead to the success of the very wines wine geeks abhor.
“Wine #3 (Beringer under cork): Nose is gone, reductive and stewed. Oxidized”
Is it chemically possible for a wine to go through both reduction and oxidation in the same container? Since it had been opened and re-corked I’m assuming it was just oxidized.
Hi Benito—reductive may have been a poor word choice. It was oxidized, but the nose was slight and just a stew of indiscernible fruit, that’s what I meant by reductive.
Jeff
Benito,
It’s possible for the wine to have already been reduced before having been uncorked, and then oxidize after that. Of course, in the refrigerator oxidation is slowed somewhat.
Jeff,
Reductive is specific to starving sulfurous compounds for oxygen—hasn’t to do with fruit smells—more like Allium/rubber.
We use the Vacu Vin at home, and love the results. I have never had as good of a result as you have, with wines starting to cash out around 2-3 days pumped and in the fridge. I can’t imagine them still holding together after 7 days, and may need to try that.
Great comments, thanks for sharing the results and others’ comments. I first learned fo the vacu vin in Burgundy France the producer I lived with used it, mainly in the cellar. I have used vacu vin for about 12 yrs. I try to do what the platypus does. If I think the wine will be kept for any length of time, I transfer it to a 375ml bottle, then sucking out the air. I have even put a vac’d bottle in the fridge - unplanned trip out of town, thought why not. I supposed gas might work, but for home use, I find off-putting personally: chemical, manufactured, over-kill for a half bottle, incongruous with the spirit of hand-made wine (maybe it’s fine for big Cali wines or Aussie franken-wines, lol, no offense). For me, glass bottles (and keep a 375ml on hand) and vacu vin work well.
Let me point out the obvious: most wines will hold up in the refrigerator for at least two days after they have been open—without help from the VacuVin, and they will do well transferred to a smaller vessel.
As for the nitrogen, it is not adding a chemical to the wine, it is blanketing the wine with an inert gas that shields against oxygen getting into solution.
Having said that, I also recognize the power of suggestion.
I performed an inadvertent test with two identical bottles of Argentinian Chardonnay. I opened one bottle at a friend’s house, and we got through half of it. I stuck the cork back in and tossed the bottle in my car’s trunk. Where it rolled around for a week. In summer, with temps over 100.
I finally remembered it and decided to do a side-by-side comparison. The badly abused bottle was so rank and nasty that I couldn’t even sip it—the smell was revolting. I poured it out and my drain stank for a couple of days.
Benito,
You need air conditioning in your trunk.
Jeff,
Thanks for the informative test.
Yup, I have always been a proponent of finding a smaller bottle/container to store the wine in….particularly one that you can fill up to the rim to minimize the air contact, then place it in the fridge.
Living in a household where I am pretty much the only one drinking wine, I have had many an occasion to try and preserve a 1/2 bottle of wine.
Suppose I should just start buying more splits!
I am searching webcam chat tips on google so i found your post so this is a very interesting find indeed. I will have to check it out when I get the time though. Thanks for the nice tips.
car mats
I like your blog.And my tests were always for at least half full bottles and for no more than two days storage, which, in my view, is the outside limit for storing opened wine.
Thank you! I stuck the cork back in and tossed the bottle in my car’s trunk. Where it rolled around for a week. In summer, with temps over 100.
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What am I missing?
Notes on bottles 1, 3, and 4 seem rather similar—all bad.