According to Wine Enthusiast, “Using a high-quality wine aerator can make a wine taste twice as expensive, turning that $10 bottle into a $20 bottle almost instantly. You’ll get twice the flavor for exactly the same price.” I know I love my aerators, but I often forget to use them. I think I enjoy swirling my wine too much 🙂 But this week, I discovered a new aerator that really excites me: Rick Russell’s Wine Breather. So I thought I’d do a little research on this new-to-me product.
About Rick Russell
Rick is a professional photographer with over thirty years of experience, specializing in commercial and people photography. He started the company Vinosamour.com. According to their website, “Vinosamour is a romantic, wine-themed inspiration of love of family and friends. It is a merger of many years of professional photographic and corporate retail backgrounds combined with an appreciation of wine. Vinosamour is designed to offer richly attractive essentials for the home in a style of simplistic elegance and class.”
The company offers artwork, placemats, coasters, serving trays, wine art puzzles and the all-important Wine Breather, which was introduced in 1996.
About the Wine Breather
Rick Russell’s Wine Breather was first introduced in 1996 at the Los Angeles Gift Show, where it received a special Innovative/New Product Award and had sold out several times through Hammacher Schlemmer.
In as little as thirty seconds, “Rick Russell’s Wine Breather softens tannins, refines the flavor and greatly smoothens the finish, allowing fine wines to drink at several times their purchase price.”
Quality designed of heavy gauge anodized aluminum and stainless steel, it is perfect for even the most discerning of wine enthusiasts for home entertainment.
Rick says that this product is “As Indispensable As Your Corkscrew!”
The cost: $79.99
How Do You Use It?
They recommend having the wine at or near room temperature. You’ll want to pour a glass of wine out of the bottle, which can serve as a comparison to the aerated wine.
Once you pour the one glass out, you’ll put the unit into the bottle and turn it on for anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds. Your wine gets shaken in a wonderful way, and the end result is an aerated wine.
Is the Wine Breather Better than Other Aerators?
If I’m not decanting a bottle of wine, I use this traditional aerator.
It’s tried and true. But does it get the kind of activity that Rick’s product gets? I don’t think so.
How do I know if the extra activity makes the wine better? I did a side-by-side comparison of a glass with no aeration, a glass with standard aeration and a glass with Rick’s device. Guess what. The last two tasted great and pretty identical. In fairness, I only used Rick’s device for 30 seconds. The next time, I’ll try it for 60 seconds and see if that makes a difference.
Have you tried Rick’s product? What did you think? How did it compare to other aerators? I’d love to know your thoughts.
