The Wine Knows - gadgets

Testing the 'breathable' wine glass

Mon, 19 May 2008 14:42:48 -0400

Braiden Rex-Johnson's first wine column for The Seattle Times' Pacific Northwest magazine section looks at the Eisch breathable wine glass, a device purported to aerate a wine in as few as four minutes.

Self-serve wine tasting

Sun, 18 May 2008 16:40:45 -0400

If you've read about those self-serve wine-tasting machines but haven't yet seen one in action, check out our video below.

The Enomatic has been around for at least a couple of years and has been in action in various areas of the country. Now, it's in Oregon wine country.

How to break Riedel

Fri, 09 May 2008 13:01:07 -0400

I know better than to dry my crystal wine glasses by putting a cloth inside the glass then twisting the base.

I know better.

Cool gadget of the week

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:13:35 -0400

Here's the "I've Gotta Have That" wine glass of the week - and it isn't even from Riedel.

My wife found this in the Museum of Modern Art catalogue: It's an inside-out sparkling wine glass.

More sabering

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 17:34:12 -0500

I've sort of become addicted to sabering bottles of sparkling wine. I've now sabered three and am looking for excuses to drink bubbly. While at the grocery store yesterday, I saw some Mountain Dome Brut on sale, so I bought two bottles.

My first time

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 17:35:22 -0500

Until Saturday, I'd never opened a bottle of sparkling wine with a saber. If you saw our 100th episode of the Northwest Winecast, you know all about sabrage, the act of opening a bottle of bubbly by slicing off the top.

Wine gadgets

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 02:05:35 -0500

Wine tasting vending machines

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 14:48:16 -0500

I ran across this automated tasting bar in use at a Chicago wine shop. It provides tastes of up to 24 wines at any time, and the person wanting to try a wine simply uses a "smart card" to buy tastes. Tastes cost anywhere from 50 cents to $5, depending on the wine. The wines stay fresh, thanks to the nitrogen gas system.

Sabrage!

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 17:37:54 -0500

Today, we published our 100th episode of the Northwest Winecast, our weekly video show that features the people and places of Northwest wine country. To celebrate, we decided to open a bottle of bubbly. With a saber.

How many Riedel glasses do you have? How many do you need?

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 15:11:25 -0400

I will admit to being a bit of a wine glass snob.

Three months ago, I bought the soon-to-be-released Oregon Pinot Noir glasses created by Riedel. I haven't tested them yet to see if they really are better for Oregon Pinot than the Riedel Vinum Pinot Noir glasses I own.

Tasting truly blind

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 01:36:14 -0500

For any wine that is reviewed in Wine Press Northwest (including our Wine of the Week selections), we taste blind. What does this mean?

If we taste single-blind, it means we know what kind of wine we're tasting (such as Syrah) but not the producer. If we taste double-blind, we know neither the producer nor the variety or style.

Tasting vs. drinking

Sat, 30 Dec 2006 21:35:24 -0500

I got some pretty good responses via email to my post last week about (not) drinking and driving. It got me to thinking about another question I get rather regularly: Do professional wine tasters get drunk during big judgings?

New toy

Sat, 30 Dec 2006 20:58:44 -0500

On the way to work this morning, I stopped at a vineyard supply store and picked a new gadget. It's a refractometer, a device used to measure the sugar content in grapes (and other things, I suppose).

Putting Dream Taste to the test

Sat, 30 Dec 2006 20:16:56 -0500

Leave it to the French to try to come up with a way to fix cork-tainted wines. Out of Burgundy comes a product called Dream Taste that promises to remove TCA, the compound that makes 3-10% of wines smell like a wet dog.