“The wine condom” will protect your wine once the bottle has been opened, it claims. Proper protection for your wine is indeed a good tag line.
This new wine-related Kickstarter “wine condom” project had me intrigued when I read about it. What could possibly a “wine condom” do? If anything, I would love for my wines to go forth and multiply. Or a new type of flavouring? But no, that is not what this is about, or about to prevent. The Wine Condom is a little rubber thingy (yes) that you can use to reseal a bottle that has been opened.
Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform that gives budding entrepreneurs the possibility to get funding for various ideas. (I recently wrote about a crowdfunded wine movie.) Mitchell Strahan had the idea of the wine condom when his mother came home with a bottle of wine sealed with plastic and rubber bands. Now he is trying to raise $ 7500 to complete his wine condom Kickstarter project. You can support his project with anything from $1 (he will raise a glass to you) to $150 (for which you will get a whole bunch of wine condoms plus various other goodies).
So what does this wine condom device actually do? Well, it looks a bit like a tiny condom. You put it over the mouth (indeed) of the bottle that you have opened and not finished and roll it down. Voilà. The bottle is resealed. Clever. Easy.
Here you can see it in action:
But I must admit I was a little bit disappointed. Yes, it is a fun gadget, but what does it do that you do not simply achieve with a regular cork stopper, e.g. one salvaged from a port wine or a whisky bottle?
I had perhaps my expectations up too high. First I thought it was a device that you inflated inside the bottle in order to remove the air inside and keep the wine fresh. But no, that was not what the wine condom did.
I think that should work pretty well: inflate a kid’s balloon inside a bottle to push out the air and your wine will keep for longer. I wonder if anyone has ever tried that? Should work. (You will need a thin plastic tube too. Try it and you will see why. On the other hand, an opened bottle of wine keeps for quite a long time even without any kind of special wine preservation device.) It probably even works with a condom, come to think of it. But in that case you might want to choose one that is not chocolate or cherry (or bacon!) flavoured so as not to alter the taste of the wine…
There is actually a device that works a little bit like that: the wine balloon, albeit it is more like an gigantic inflatable cork. It presents itself as a device to help you keep an opened bottle of wine fresh for a longer time, a “wine-saver” type of thing:
And I am not sure that I want to pay $25 for something that I could probably achieve with a 2 cent balloon…
But admittedly, The Wine Condom is much more fun. And it is undeniably clever branding!
Why not give it a try and support the Kickstarter project?
And let me know if you try the trick I suggest with a balloon (or a condom…)!
