Customer Rating: 
Summary: Product looks good - BUT
Comment: Good News/Other News/Disappointment
Good News:
[...]
Quick delivery-thanks Amazon
Other News:
White set sells for $9.95
Crystal pourers (sold separately) are $4.95
Stainless set (including pourers) is $29.95
Disappointment. Pourers in the Stainless set are plastic.
Appears to work OK. I didn't hear the click, however I
didn't have my hearing
AIDS on.
Customer Rating: Summary: Use the pump, enjoy your wine tomorrow
Comment:
Looking at the reviews of this an other Vacuvin products, you see reports that are deeply contradictory. It's interesting that there is such a divergence of experience with such a simple product. The ideas behind Vacuvin are pretty simple.
First, air is the enemy of an open bottle of wine. Bacteria in the air want to turn alcohol into vinegar. The air itself oxidizes and dulls the taste of all but the most robust wines.
Second, you can remove some of the air with a simple pump and thereby slow down the rate at which wine deteriorates.
Why then, do we have both no-star and five-star reactions to this product?
Maybe the biggest source of disagreement is expectations. Vacuvin slows the deterioration of wine in the bottle, but it doesn't stop it.
Another possible reason for all the disagreement might be a question of temperature. The biochemical reactions that kill your wine are temperature sensitive. They proceed faster when the wine is warm and slow down when it's cool. Putting a pumped-out bottle in the refrigerator or wine cooler will slow down the spoilage processes and make Vacuvin more effective.
A third issue is the way the wine is handled before the Vacuvin plug goes in. If wine has a lot of air dissolved in it by being poured from decanter to bottle, there's no system that will keep it fresh.
For more info on wine storage, check out my book, New Short Course in Wine,The
--Lynn Hoffman, author of New Short Course in Wine,The and bang BANG: A Novel from Kunati Books.
