Wednesday, 12 January 2011

Vinturi Wine Aerator

Vinturi

Back when I was starting off on the wine-drinking caper I was inclined to be dismissive of concepts like breathing, which probably sounds like heresy, but there's only so much room for improvement in a flagon of McWilliams Burgundy.

We moved upmarket from there, of course, but still, when you're quaffing the products of places that operate on an industrial scale and aim at the bulk end of the market in an environment where the effect is as important as the actual taste you're likely to ascribe the improvement in the glass to the Mental As Anything Nips Are Getting Bigger principle.

You know the one, the more you drink the larger the measures and the better it tastes.

Having finally reached the point where we've left that end of the market behind, however, 'Er Indoors and I have come to the conclusion that, yes, this breathing thing actually works the way they say it does, but there are difficulties, largely based around whether you can pre-plan your afternoon or evening's consumption.

That's reasonably straightforward when it's just the two of us, but if the likes of Angry or Warbo and the Dragon Lady lob on the doorstep complications develop with alarming rapidity. For a start they invariably arrive with a bottle which they may or may not insist that I open there and then.

Under those circumstances you tend to be wary of opening a decent bottle of red well in advance of the advertised arrival time because you may not actually be getting to it that afternoon. An encounter with Jimbo on the morning walk some two months ago put paid to those concerns in one fell swoop.

Prior to the encounter I'd already seen, heard and tasted the results of a Vinturi Wine Aerator, and the experience had inflicted unexpected pain on the credit card, so I was familiar with the concept.

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