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Wine accessories that every good wine-lover must have
Well, to tell you the truth, these wine accessories aren’t essential, but it’s worth saying that most of them can make your work so much easier that even MacGyver himself would be happy to give his miraculous Swiss army knife a day off.
Today we bring you a few suggestions for wine accessories to make life easier for wine-lovers and enthusiasts, and why not? So you can offer a more professional and more attractive service, and thus show off in front of the “obligatory brother-in-law” at any family get-together.
What do we need to start off?
You don’t need to be an expert in the subject to know that each type of wine has an optimum temperature for consuming. In an ideal world it would be great to be able to have a wine cooler or wine fridge which, in addition to being able to consume the wine at the proper temperature, would also allow it to be kept in better conditions. You can find great options for home use that allow you to store four or more bottles. It will be up to you and your needs to establish whether size matters… (of the fridge, of course)
If our wines are now at a suitable temperature, what’s the next step?
Here the MacGyver knife could be useful, but there are safer and more comfortable wine accessories for uncorking a bottle. One of the most practical corkscrews is the double lever corkscrew, which is used by virtually all professionals in the catering sector. It’s very easy to use, takes up hardly any room and has a built-in blade to cut the bottle cap and a notch to open those that have a metal foil cover.
There are many more options on the market such as lever corkscrews, those that are fixed to the wall, electrical corkscrews… and there are also very special ones, two-prong corkscrews. These are very useful when you need to extract a damaged or fragile cork, like those for great wines in
old bottles.
Now that we have our wine open, let’s move on to the next step:
To decant or not to decant? That is the question… It’s not compulsory to decant or oxygenate a wine, however there are some wines that this pre-tasting step suits well because their organoleptic properties are enhanced. They also “breathe” eliminating unpleasant aromas that can be generated by remaining bottled for several years.
Decanting them allows us to detect and eliminate the sediments that may be generated due to the wine’s natural ageing process. To do so, it can be useful to have a decanter.
There is also a curious wine accessory that is a cheaper and simpler option for oxygenating the wine without complications. This is the aerator, a gadget that is inserted into the neck of the bottle and which, due to its design, makes it possible to slow down the pouring while at the same time absorbing oxygen that aerates it while it is served. Those that are transparent allow the user to control and prevent sediments from passing into the glass.
But, beware, we need to take into account the characteristics of the wine that we’re going to enjoy. Proper use of these accessories can enhance your enjoyment, but unnecessary use could even spoil the wine.
If you’re clear about it, Decant it! If you’re not sure, the simplest thing is to oxygenate it directly in the glass, so you can experience how its aromas evolve while it aerates. When the wine doesn’t need to be decanted, we can serve it directly.
Anti–drip discs are folded discs that are inserted into the neck of the bottle and aid in serving the wine while avoiding annoying drips. Clean tablecloths with an easy and economical solution, and moreover the discs are reusable.
And where will we serve our wine?
Wineglasses come in dozens of sizes, models and qualities, there are even specific designs to enhance the qualities of certain grapes and wine styles, but it’s enough to find one that’s like the white shirt in the wine-lover’s wardrobe: that allows us to enjoy both white and red wines, and in both cases enhance their characteristics, a versatile wineglass such as the Zalto Universal wineglass.
You can find similar options that match your requirements.
A wine accessory that’s also worth having at home, especially if you don’t have an ice bucket, is a Cooler Bag, which will allow you to keep the wine at the right temperature. The bag is stored in the freezer so that it’s ready whenever necessary.
And what happens if we leave the bottle half finished?
We have two options better than cork for extending a little longer the life of the wine that’s left in the bottle and that we weren’t able to enjoy at the time, and in the case of sparkling wines you can forget the famous “spoon in the bottle trick”, which in reality is completely useless.
For still wines we can use Vacu Vin stoppers. These come with a vacuum pump with which the air is extracted, after placing the stopper in the neck of the bottle, to prevent contact with the air oxidizing the wine.
For sparkling ones, there are airtight stoppers whose securing mechanism prevents them from losing CO2. There are some, like this Vacu Vin black cava dispensing cap, which also have a serving dispenser.
There are accessories for wine that are already on another level. The great invention is the Coravin. In 1998, Greg Lambrecht, a medical surgeon and a great wine fan, came up with the idea of being able to pour himself a glass without having to uncork the bottle and thus be able to keep the rest of the wine to enjoy on another occasion. Thus was born this modern gadget that makes it possible to extract a quantity of wine and preserve the rest of the liquid in the bottle, even for years, sealed with its original cork.
This wine accessory is an ideal option to add to next Christmas’s gift wish-list.
If you like to open bottles of wine with friends, the following will be very useful for you. Identifiers are rubber stickers that adhere to wineglasses and, being in different colours and even fun shapes, will help you recognise your own glass among those of others.
They’re also very useful if you’re fond of organising mini tasting sessions where you open and try several wines at once. The Identifiers will help you distinguish the glasses that contain wines that are very similar to each other.
We hope you’ll find these suggestions useful for starting or completing the must-haves compartment in your own private wine cellar.
