Wine Aerator Buyer’s Guide
I had always wondered whether a wine aerator would really work on my wine collection. My wife and I enjoy a good red wine and often by it by the case from supermarkets. I had read about wine aerators in my monthly wine club magazine but had never tried one before. My wife bought me the Vinturi Wine Aerator as a Christmas present and since then we do not drink wine without putting it through this wine aerator.
Let me be clear, I am not a wine connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination but do enjoy a good glass of wine now and again. Put simply, I love wines and any device that can bring out the best in the wines I buy gets my full blessing!
Wine Aerator – Why use one?
Wine aerators are a relatively modern invention that force air into your wine allowing you to drink it as if it had “breathed” for hours. Wine aerators are perfect for those of us who appreciate the flavors and scents of wines but do not have unlimited budgets to buy prized cellars. Aerators are perfect for dinner parties or for sampling wines at their finest. The cost of a wine aerator is relatively cheap, around $30. But you will save this amount over time as a decent wine aerator can turn an average bottle of wine into something heavenly!
The purpose of a wine aerator is to filter air through the wine. We all know that a red wine needs to breathe in order to appreciate it at its fullest. The boutique and taste is brought out by forcing air into the wine and this process can be sped up with a good wine aerator. Many people believe the myth that allowing a wine to breathe will cause the flavor and scents to evaporate. This simply is not true, in fact the opposite occurs with fuller flavors and richer scents.
We find that many of the younger red wines that we buy from the supermarket contain lots of tannins. This causes a bitter finish to the wine as during the fermentation process, the skins and seeds of the red grapes release such tannins into the wine. You will have probably drunk wines which “dry out your mouth”, these are the wines with large amounts of tannins in them. Using a wine aerator will often soften these tannins and allow the red wine to be drunk more smoothly and the smells released are greater.
Wine Aerator – The Best On The Market
There are now a huge amount of wine aerator products on the market. Gone are the days where you had to leave your wine in a decanter for hours to breathe. We recently gathered at our wine club to specifically test each wine aerator below:
