There are a plethora of wine gadgets and wine accessories for the wine lover, some more essential than others, and sometimes it seems as though you can spend almost as much on wine gadgets as you can on the bottles themselves. Once Christmas comes along the wine lover can expect to be showered with wine related gifts and wine cellar accessories, and over the years as your interest develops then so will the collection of different corkscrews, foil-cutters, decanters, stoppers, thermometers, coasters and bottle tags.
Once you appreciate the size of this growing collection of wine accessories it becomes important to distinguish between those wine accessories that are genuinely useful and those which are merely gimmicks. Firstly a good foil cutter is an essential wine bottle accessory, as is a decent corkscrew. Corkscrews range from the downright cheap to those that are amazingly good and expensive. The best, such as those produced by Screwpull, have a leverpull on top that will quickly and easily uncork as many bottles as is needed, a good investment for the serious wine aficionado. If this sounds a little too elaborate, it is good to choose a corkscrew with a locking head and arms that push down as you twist, or the reliable, super-cheap 'waiters friend' model, which is good for those particularly crumbly corks, and folds up to slip easily into a pocket. Another cheap, and less glamorous but, useful wine gadget, is a padded cooling sleeve that can live in the freezer ready to be popped over a bottle that needs a quick chilling, certainly a lot cheaper than a wine cooler or specific wine refrigerator and available from most suppliers of wholesale wine accessories or fine wine accessories.
One wine accessory that is often overlooked or misunderstood is the use of a decanter, most people dismissing their use as pretentious. So how does decanting wine help its appreciation? If you have just parted with a small fortune for that grand old bottle of wine then decanting allows you to pour the wine off the inevitable sediment in the bottle, thus removing the chance of unsightly blobs in the bottom of your glass. With wine being consumed younger and younger this sediment issue has taken a back seat, but decanting also allows your wine to aerate fully. This oxidises the wine, which both brings out the aroma and by some process pulls all the flavours in the wine together, making a smoother, more rounded drink. Indeed some people feel that decanting cheaper wines has improved their drinkability. The world wide web allows us to explore the best of international wine accessories including the increasing range of leather wine accessories, whilst more local suppliers such as Gossamer Bay wine accessories can supply all accessories for wine collectors.
