WineShield Wine Preservation System????

Chris Macias reported in today's SacBee on a new wine preservation system for a partially consumed bottle called the WineShield:
SacBee:WineShield

He reported for a wine that was "preserved" for 3 days w/ the WineShield "without hints of browning or other oxidation"
Well....doh....you'd get that same result w/ a non-preserved btl, given that the oxidation rate is so slow in young wine.
The WineShield site is:
WineShield

Lots of anecdotal testimony as to its efficacy on their WebSite.
Anybody seen this thing in action or tried it out?? The scientist in me in skeptical. However, my contention is that the deterioration in a partially opened btl is not due to oxidation, but due to the escape of wine volatiles into the headspace. So, if I understand it correctly, the WineShield might potentially be something that works.
Hmmmmm...maybe I'll buy one and put it to the test. It's not that expensive.
Warning:The free shipping for online ordering is not free.
Tom

talk amongst yourselves while we await the results!

Richard (aka Webwineman) brought this up a couple of months ago,

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=33918

Salute

I wonder how well this was received in Australia. It was interesting that when I visited several winemakers in their homes in the Barossa Valley three winemakers had bottles of wine on their kitchen counters that they kept open for two to three days, usually big Shriraz. They all said it was "normal" to do so.

A friend sent me a set of these last year, and the two I've used seemed to keep the wine well for three and four days respectively -- I actually liked a Riesling better on the third day.

Not a scientific test, however -- just an antecdote. Dead easy to use and there wasn't a gap between the device and the bottle on the two standard bottles. Much easier than freezing or the half bottle systems that I've used for years. Count me as a satisfied early adaptor.

(And, as a solitary wine drinker most evenings now, some such system is essential.)

Regards, Bob

So....Bob....I just bought a 10-pak.
I gather these are not reusable??
Tom

I suppose you could fish them out, Tom, but it would take a fairly long handled pair of tweezers. I think they would be pliable enough with a six inch pair of tweezers to get enough of a hold on the device, and twirl it on the tweezers, and extract. I'll try that next time.

They are made to be disposed of with the bottle. The inventor covered the point on an interesting discussion in Australia, where he won an Invention award. He said that recycled glass guys melt the glass and then have a method of extracting paper (from labels), corks and other refuse.

Regards, Bob

I suppose you could fish them out, Tom, but it would take a fairly long handled pair of tweezers. I think they would be pliable enough with a six inch pair of tweezers to get enough of a hold on the device, and twirl it on the tweezers, and extract. I'll try that next time.
They are made to be disposed of with the bottle. The inventor covered the point on an interesting discussion in Australia, where he won an Invention award. He said that recycled glass guys melt the glass and then have a method of extracting paper (from labels), corks and other refuse.
Regards, Bob

Hmmmmmm, Bob....couldn't you just take a hammer and bust that sucker outta there?? When you're an engineer w/ a hammer,
the entire world looks like a nail!!!!
Tom

Well, you could, Tom, but finesse sometimes pays.

A hammer requires, among other things:

1. A hammer.
2. A solid surface to place the bottle on.
3. A room not containing soft surfaces such as wives, pets, pillows, balloons, etc. etc.
4. Perhaps, an all encompassing absorbent blanket.
5. Safety glasses.
6. A strong arm with some small bit of arm/hand/eye coordination.
7. Foresight to think of all that, plus putting the bottle on a tarp or some other storng surface to catch all the debris.
8. A bag to put the debris in.
9. A well written legal document absolving me of all responsibility for haming all and sundry in the neighborhood.
10. A careful appreciation of all the engineering aspects of the actual striking of the blow, carefully calibrated to be sure that the damn bottle will actually break but will not shatter into so many pieces that three months later I will find a shard or two as I walk barefoot through my garage.

And, finally, all of the microscopic eye glass enhancement necessary to find the damn thing among all the shards, let alone the calculus necessary to determine where, in the excitement of the breakage, I'll actually find it.

***

On balance, after careful consideration of the engineering, legal and uncordinated aspects of this wine lovers physical structure, I think I'll just throw the damn bottle, complete with plastic thingamingig, in the recyclable bin and let the sanitary and environmental engineers hired by Franklin Lakes, as independent contractors I should point out, deal with it.

Franklin Lakes is perfectly capable of sending me really impressive warnings about my failures to comply with their disposal rules. You would only need to review the furor that disposing of six EverReady 6 volt batteries in our recyclable trash caused within the body politic to appreciate this last comment.

Regards, Bob

Got my set of 10 WineShields in the mail Wed. They're a (presumably food-grade) poly disk with slits cut around the periphery to give it little flaps around the outside so that it can seal(?) the O2 out from the wine against the bottle wall. It comes in a little mylar "sachet" w/ slits top & bottom. There's a little tweezer-like tongs that you insert in the top slit, twist it a revolution or two until the WineShield is rolled up into a tube, then you push it thru the bottom slit & into the neck of the opened (it seems an important step that you've removed the cork from the wine but they don't seem to address that in the instructions) btl, release the tongs, and the WineShield plops down onto the surface of the wine. The WineShield has 6 flaccid bubbles (think bubble-wrap) in the centre to make it float on the wine's surface. The instructions seem a bit complicated & obtuse. It purports to preserve the opened wine for up to five days.
Got two btls each of a TJ's petite Reserve Rutherford Chard and a TJ's Mendocino red. Opened up all 4 btls & poured off the top wine until the level was down just below the shoulder. One btl each I'm leaving open, exposed to the air. The other btl has the WineShield inserted, floatin' on top of the wine, and then stoppered w/ a Vino-Loc. just for xtra measure to inhibiit oxidation. I, and friends, will blind taste the two wines over the next few days and report back if WineShield does the job. Probably even do the statistics.
Tom

I'm awaiting the results of your experiment, Tom. On viewing the video demo on the wineshield's website I was most struck by the woman’s filling the wine glass too full, in my opinion, which makes me question everything in the video - that's just me.

Tom,
I've got to say that the idea sounds completely reasonable to me. Since both oxidation and evaporative loss are transport phenomena that depend on interfacial surface area, anything that dramatically reduces the interfacial surface area ought to reduce the rate of both phenomena. So it doesn't have to be a perfect seal to work as advertised, merely an effective cover for the surface of the wine. If they achieve a thousandfold reduction in exposed surface area, that ought to translate in a 1000-fold reduction in the rate of oxidation. Do you disagree?

Mark Lipton

Since both oxidation and evaporative loss are transport phenomena that depend on interfacial surface area, anything that dramatically reduces the interfacial surface area ought to reduce the rate of both phenomena.

Though some (Jamie Goode IIRC) suggest that wine that has sloshed about a bit in the bottle has already taken a lot of oxygen into solution. And it is that oxygen that will, over time, oxidise your wine - rather than the oxygen that dissolves while the bottle is sitting there in your fridge. I don't know - I have seen no hard evidence either way.

But if oxygen is already in solution, and the wine surface does transmit oxygen, it must help to lower the partial pressure of oxygen above the wine - either using a vacuum or another gas. And the plastic cover would not help.

Since both oxidation and evaporative loss are transport phenomena that depend on interfacial surface area, anything that dramatically reduces the interfacial surface area ought to reduce the rate of both phenomena.

Though some (Jamie Goode IIRC) suggest that wine that has sloshed about a bit in the bottle has already taken a lot of oxygen into solution. And it is that oxygen that will, over time, oxidise your wine - rather than the oxygen that dissolves while the bottle is sitting there in your fridge. I don't know - I have seen no hard evidence either way.

But if oxygen is already in solution, and the wine surface does transmit oxygen, it must help to lower the partial pressure of oxygen above the wine - either using a vacuum or another gas. And the plastic cover would not help.

Fair enough, Steve, though in that case I wouldn't expect any wine preservation system to help. A Vacu-Vin isn't going to deoxygenate wine unless you bring the wine to a boil and a nitrogen sparge system would have to run for a good 5-10 minutes to significantly reduce the amount of dissolved oxygen in the wine (during which time various volatile aromas will also be forced out of the wine).

Mark Lipton

Mark - couldn't merely changing the gas or air pressure above the wine change the equilibrium and cause oxygen to come out of solution? At least as fast as it would go in through a still wine surface?

I am not arguing one way or the other really - just trying to understand what might be going on.

Actually the evidence for wineshield is a bit stronger that anecdotal. Their whitepaper has lab results that look convincing - but not totally independent of course.

An “undisturbed”, “room temperature” wine exposed to air/oxygen will become saturated with oxygen at around 7 to 10 mg of oxygen per liter of wine. (Like Mark stated depending upon the amount of surface area exposed (and time of exposure, temperature, pressure, and volume of the wine, etc) will dictate how much uptake of oxygen the wine experiences). Once the wine is saturated with all the “dissolved” oxygen it can hold, it will remain saturated. Only after some of that “dissolved” oxygen reacts with other components in the wine will the wine absorb or uptake more oxygen. (Probably some reactions involving oxygen as a reactant occur fairly quickly but others are more complex and could take some time). Most wines today contain sulfites; this I think will bind up fairly quickly with most of the “dissolved” oxygen in solution (thus allowing more uptake or absorption of oxygen). Only when the sulfite concentration drops and decreases, thus giving the dissolved oxygen a better chance of meeting up and colliding with other components of the wine will “bad” oxidation start possible occurring.
For the solitary wine drinkers or those who can’t finish a bottle of wine at a sitting, a device, which could “slow” things down (possible due to its low permeability to air and ability to reduce the “headspace”) in an opened bottle of wine, is most definitely beneficial.

Salute

Mark - couldn't merely changing the gas or air pressure above the wine change the equilibrium and cause oxygen to come out of solution? At least as fast as it would go in through a still wine surface?

I am not arguing one way or the other really - just trying to understand what might be going on.

Steve,
I can only cite anecdotal data here. If I want to deoxygenate a lab solvent, placing it into a flask with a nitrogen atmosphere does little if anything to accomplish that. Sparging 4-5 minutes with nitrogen gets rid of about 95% of the oxygen, but not all. To get rid of all oxygen, we have to perform two cycles of freeze-pump-thaw, in which the solvent is frozen (thereby degassing it), the atmosphere is removed under vacuum and then replaced with e.g. nitrogen and the solvent thawed. Although you're correct that the rate of diffusion out of solution should be microscopically the same as that into solution, the solubility of oxygen in water much higher than that of nitrogen. When you couple that with the consumption of oxygen by reaction inside the wine, it becomes very tough to remove efficiently.

Mark Lipton

Thanks for the reply Mark.

Nothing more to add really, apart from the general observation that it would be nice to see more experimental data on how wines take up oxygen and how it can be prevented. I think the Wineshield whitepaper is all I have seen. I suppose there is very little incentive to do the research - wine drinkers have the most to gain but they would need to get organised.

An “undisturbed”, “room temperature” wine exposed to air/oxygen will become saturated with oxygen at around 7 to 10 mg of oxygen per liter of wine. (Like Mark stated depending upon the amount of surface area exposed (and time of exposure, temperature, pressure, and volume of the wine, etc) will dictate how much uptake of oxygen the wine experiences). Once the wine is saturated with all the “dissolved” oxygen it can hold, it will remain saturated. Only after some of that “dissolved” oxygen reacts with other components in the wine will the wine absorb or uptake more oxygen. (Probably some reactions involving oxygen as a reactant occur fairly quickly but others are more complex and could take some time). Most wines today contain sulfites; this I think will bind up fairly quickly with most of the “dissolved” oxygen in solution (thus allowing more uptake or absorption of oxygen). Only when the sulfite concentration drops and decreases, thus giving the dissolved oxygen a better chance of meeting up and colliding with other components of the wine will “bad” oxidation start possible occurring.
For the solitary wine drinkers or those who can’t finish a bottle of wine at a sitting, a device, which could “slow” things down (possible due to its low permeability to air and ability to reduce the “headspace”) in an opened bottle of wine, is most definitely beneficial.
Salute

So...Victor. So what are the sensory characteristics of a wine that is fully saturated by O2. Granted, the O2 needs to be in solution to start to produce oxidation effects.
But are there any sensory characteristics of a fully saturated O2 before any actual oxidation has taken place.
That is, if I open a btl of wine and bubble O2 thru it to saturation, or put it in a blender, will I be able to identify a saturated O2 solution wine?
Tom

Hi Tom,
Wines get saturated with oxygen very quickly (no need to pump oxygen into it or put it in your blender). An “undisturbed”, "room temperature" exposed wine surface area equal to 1-foot will uptake 20 mg of oxygen per hour. So lets say you carefully uncork a 750 ml bottle of wine (without disturbing the wine surface), in about 1 hour (of exposure time) you will be very near “saturation”.

Salute

But Victor wouldn't there only be a square inch or so of surface exposed in that case? Bob

Hi Bob,
Absolutely correct Bob (Thanks). Lets say at the fill-line the wine makes a 1-inch (.083 ft) diameter circle of exposed wine. Radius = .0415 ft; Area of the circle in ft = pi X radius squared (3.14 X .0415 squared = .005 ft) So in 1 hour the 750 ml bottle of wine should uptake approximately (20 X .005) .1 mg of oxygen, in 10 hours it should absorb 1 mg. Sorry Tom, it might take 2 days before the wine becomes saturated (assuming there is some dissolved oxygen in there already).

Salute

Hi Bob,
Absolutely correct Bob (Thanks). Lets say at the fill-line the wine makes a 1-inch (.083 ft) diameter circle of exposed wine. Radius = .0415 ft; Area of the circle in ft = pi X radius squared (3.14 X .0415 squared = .005 ft) So in 1 hour the 750 ml bottle of wine should uptake approximately (20 X .005) .1 mg of oxygen, in 10 hours it should absorb 1 mg. Sorry Tom, it might take 2 days before the wine becomes saturated (assuming there is some dissolved oxygen in there already).
Salute

OhOhOhOh....I just love it when wine geeks talk science and higher mathematics!!!
Thanks for clarifying, Victor. So...if you pour down to the shoulder, it should saturate within a few hrs I gather?? Ain't gonna do the math, though.
Tom

So, assuming that the wine is saturated in anywhere from a few hours to a few days do we all agree that the Wine Shield might be a good option? Or are we still skeptical?