It's baaack

[Alex]

Reminiscent of our old friend The Wine Clip (and The Wine Clip, Part Deux), there's now a marketing blitz for yet another magnetic wine "enhancer," the Bev Wizard.

What's different about the Bev Wizard is: 1) it uses less esoteric magnets, so it's selling for $30, not $79; 2) the inventor is a certified master of wine; 3) his claim for the device is free of hyperbole and more or less matches the impressions of those eG members who tried out the Clip -- that the device accomplishes the same thing as aeration, only quicker. However, he claims it speeds up the process by "hours"; those eG'ers who thought magnetic treatment made a difference said that it it was more like 15 to 30 minutes.

I find it fascinating how new variations of this kind of device pop up every so often even though none seems to sell very well.

[JohnL]

I believe the linked piece contains all one needs to know about this silly gizmo.

"eventually he came up with a molded plastic device that looks like a regular non drip pourer and has an air hole to speed up oxygenation...."

So--is it the magnets or could it possibly be the "oxygenation" thing?

One could save a lot of money by simply aerating the wine!

or............maybe not!

Aerating the wine "properly" would involve a special opening/cork removal system and a $100 decanter designated specifically for the varietal or type of wine and then some special wine glasses that are only to be used for each type of wine to enhance its taste and then......

[Mano]

Reminiscent of our old friend The Wine Clip (and The Wine Clip, Part Deux), there's now a marketing blitz for yet another magnetic wine "enhancer," the Bev Wizard.

I find it fascinating how new variations of this kind of device pop up every so often even though none seems to sell very well.

←

Here's a link to the audiophile equivalent of the wine clip:

http://www.referenceaudiomods.com/Merchant...Product_Count=2

[cdh]

Somebody mentioned this a few weeks back... and I pointed out the wine clip thread. Somebody out there read that and sent me an email explaining how wrong I was that this this was like the wine clip, and that it actually worked, particularly with brown liquor. They asked me to post something to that effect here. I wrote back exhorting whoever it was to join up and post it himself, but that never happened.

This thing either has some grassroots marketing going on, or a huge marketing budget.

If anybody has one, run some cheeeep cognac through it and see if it improves. I'm kinda curious.

[ctgm]

why are we always in a hurry these days? just pour your cheap wine into a decanter 30 minutes/1hour, or whatever, before you drink it.

[MaxH]

Here's a link to the audiophile equivalent of the wine clip:

http://www.referenceaudiomods.com/Merchant...Product_Count=2

A venerable subject online, though complicated by counter-intuitive cases where an unlikely technique does some demonstrable good. (Years ago I gave an invited talk about that subject to practical experts, and chose only "safe" examples of bizarre audio gadgets -- examples that contradicted their own claims. But as I just mentioned, the sword of counterintuitivity is two-edged.) Which comes to the core issue: many claims circulate, hard to glibly test. (For those people even inclined to test them.) The subject is bigger than wine, or audio gadgets. And even when a reality test is easy, people resist it.

Case in point (of data, not gadgets): 20+ years ago, unscrupulous Austrian wine producers illegally employed an adulterant that backfired into a public-relations disaster. (Their motivation is often wrongly surmised, I gather, but that's a small issue.) The additive is a glycol traditionally listed (in the Merck Index for instance) to have twice as large a lethal dose (LD) as alcohol in animal tests, i.e., alcohol kills rodents at lower doses than the adulterant does. But it became perceived as "car anti-freeze" (which it isn't), thus the PR disaster. I've just summarized the regular wine-industry account of the whole case, easily found in standard books. Still, the "car anti-freeze" notion persists, and survives correction.