Story of the Slow Wine Pourer, where did the idea come from?

It all started with a restaurant owner who has a huge passion for wine. He loved to experiment and he found out that aerating a wine is not always beneficial. He thought of ways to pour wine without aerating it and in his search he used his customers as a test panel. Soon he found out that his customers could clearly state a difference between wine poured with and without aeration. After reaching this conclusion he reached out to us. This is how the idea of the Slow Wine Pourer was born and the journey began.

It’s not an Aerator

As it turns out that older wines already contain enough saturated oxygen, there is no need to aerate these wines. The oxygen enters the wine through the cork during the time it is kept in the bottle. Pouring these vintage wines ‘the usual way’ would add even more oxygen. It’s was like exposing a fossil to the air and sunlight: it will disintegrate in minutes.

In some occasions oxygen is desirable and in others, it’s not. After you opened a bottle, you may want to help the wine “breathe” by swirling it in the glass or decanting it to expose it to oxygen. This will help to develop the flavour pallet, soften the taste and let the wine open up. This goes especially for young and medium-aged wines.

But when you’re trying older or more delicate wines, a copious amount of oxygen is something you want to avoid. We discovered that the solution for this is to pour the wine as slowly as possible. Therefore our Slow Pourer does exactly the opposite of an aerator.

Two-way function

The Slow Wine Pourer works two ways. First, a thin straw will gradually guide the air into the bottom of the bottle. This is unlike a normal pour, where the air is sucked in through the bottleneck and swirls the wine firmly. Secondly, the wine is poured through a tube directly to the bottom of the wineglass. The glass is filled with as less swirling as possible. It’s like watching a bathtub slowly fill with water. No rush here, just enjoy the moment of wine filling your glass.

What oxidation does to wine

Our sense of taste can identify an oxidized wine at 8.6 parts per million (ppm). So what’s the ideal ratio? No more than 6 ppm. Over-aerating a wine can lead to an unpleasant taste. The taste can turn flat and get hints of cooked fruits. Using the Slow Wine Pourer you get in control of the amount of oxygen you add to your wine. It allows you to experiment with the taste. You can pour and drink immediately, or wait for a moment and see what happens.

Does your old wine benefit from ‘fresh air’ or not?

Written by Peter Verbeek

Let’s start with stating the obvious: wine is a good thing! There are wines in all different sorts and in all different price ranges. Most of the cheaper once still taste pretty decent as well. Wine is built. With modern techniques, it is easier than ever to still create a good wine from a bad harvest. Where a wine farmer used to live under a wet roof to control the temperature, they can now simply press some buttons. This makes it easier than ever to create ‘everyday wines’.

For most people, their wine cabinet exists of mainly ‘everyday wines’. But there are other wines, mainly older red wines from Europe or sometimes the New Wine World. These wines are produced by farmers that are craft men with passion and especially patience. These wines are not made to drink right after bottling, as there is a very high level of tannin present in the bottle. This makes the flavour of the wine tough and hard and the flavours have yet to develop. These wines have to age in the bottle as it’s called. They breathe through the cork and in during the years the taste develops. Wines like these you don’t just drink, you experience them. With every sip, you feel and taste the passion of the farmer that made the wine and when you close your eyes you can see him working the fields while his wife is preparing the hand press.

So what does this have to do with the Slow Pourer? I’ll tell you. Before you can enjoy your, in this case, red wine, there is more to it than just drinking. After all, assuming you’re not drinking from the bottle, the wine has to get into a glass. Older wines mostly have a cork, as explained before this enhances the ageing on the bottling process. Because these wines have already been subjected to oxidation in the bottle, they will now benefit from being poured with as little oxidation as possible.

Place the thin metal stem into the neck of the bottle. The plastic tube goes all the way to the bottom of the glass, to avoid the wine from swirling. You want to fill the glass as gentle as possible. Filling the glass will be like filling a bath, the wine level will slowly rise without swirling.

Does the wine taste better? That is up to you of course. At last, the taste is something really personal. But I can describe the wine that I tasted poured with the Slow Pourer. I tasted a Bordeaux Superior from 2010. The advantage of the Slow Pourer is that the wine is pure. You taste that the wine has aged in the bottle and is not influenced by the air that usually touches the wine when you pour it in a glass. You taste the wine exactly as the winemaker meant it to be. Deeper aromas and flavours come to the surface and the aftertaste is fuller. Probably fuller than when you make an older wine swirl or decant in your glass.