There’s a new way to preserve wine. It doesn’t require rubber corks or vacuums. It can be inserted right into the bottle. This new preservation system is called a Wine Shield and comes to us from Australia. Recently the folks at Wine Shield were kind enough to send me a sample so that I could share my experiences with you.
The shield itself is a flexible plastic disk about as big around as the inside diameter of a bottle of wine. The edges are frayed and there are air pockets to keep the shield on top of the wine.
How It Works
Once you’ve poured a glass or two from a freshly opened bottle of wine you insert the shield using a special fork provided with the shields. The shield unfolds itself on the surface of the wine. Floating on top of the wine surface it creates a barrier keeping the good stuff in and keeping oxygen out.
My Experience
Upon receiving the sample package I opened a bottle of wine I had on hand, poured a glass, and inserted the shield. It was easy to get the shield in place. At first I was worried the shield wouldn’t unfold, however, after a minute or so it flattened out.
When pouring additional glasses of wine with the Wine Shield it never impeded the flow of wine. It just floated around on top. Once you set the bottle down again the shield covered the entire free surface again.
I stored the wine in the refrigerator and had one glass of wine per day for five days to see how it would age. For the first two days there was little noticeable change in the wine. I could really tell I was drinking from an open bottle by the fourth day. By the fifth day the wine was pretty tired, as I would have expected from any preservation system.
Conclusions
I can see a lot of potential for the Wine Shield. Its the perfect solution for dinner parties, restaurants, and wine bars. Servers can just pour and go. No fumbling around with vacuum pumps or rubber corks.
The only “issue” I had was putting what looked like an open bottle of wine in the refrigerator. This is purely psychological on my part. Every time I opened the fridge I could hear my parents voice reminding me to close open containers!
Because the shields are not reusable you’d have to have a stash of them on hand. As someone who doesn’t keep an open bottle around very often I’d have to pay attention to my supply.
The Wine Shield is a viable alternative to vacuum systems and it’ll be interesting to follow their progress as time goes on.
*While I was provided a free sample to review I was not compensated in any. The opinions in this post are my own.*