How to Clean Wine Aerator

Beyond showing you how to clean a wine aerator, this article will quickly highlight what an aerator is, what it is used for, and how to use it.

What is a Wine Aerator?

A wine aerator is a fundamentally important wine tool as it helps to aerate both red and white wines. What it does is allow the wine to breathe before pouring it into your wine glass for a drink (almost like a strainer for your wine). This affects the wine taste, texture, and also sulfites in the wine, for an overall enhanced flavor.

There are various models of wine aerators that use different designs, shapes, and technologies. The main aim of an aerator is to offer immediate or rapid aeration. This is sometimes confused with a wine decanter, which does something similar but is not as immediate as an aerator.

If you’re a wine lover, using it enables you to better appreciate your wines. With an aerator, you don’t have to worry about waiting before you can taste your wine.

What Does a Wine Aerator Do?

The purpose of an aerator is to do simply that: aerate wine. In simple terms, it means providing oxygen to the wine. When a wine is left to breathe, it releases every one of its aromas and provides rounder tannins.

Typically, wine is left to breathe for at least an hour before it is ready to be consumed. However, this gadget speeds up the breathing process.

Traditionally, a decanter provides oxygen to the wine, but that takes a lot of time. A wine aerator cuts that time down rapidly, allowing you to drink your wine quickly and in great conditions.

The Need for Wine to Breathe

Wine is a complicated drink with ever-evolving flavour notes. This is why over the years, various schools of thoughts have searched for methods, techniques, and systems that can help wine achieve its full potential. Using an aerator helps the wine by softening its tannins and elevating its flavour note.

Using a wine aerator is a lot simpler than using a decanter. Wine oxygenation tends to happen when the wine is served in glassware. Thankfully, the wine aerator means that you don’t have to worry about anticipating when to open the bottle.

Additionally, there are a lot fewer gestures to make when using a wine aerator. The strength of a wine aerator is its ability to provide immediate or quick aeration. You no longer have to wait for a wine to become perfectly aerated.

Source: Pexels

The Intricacies of a Wine Aerator

When wine comes into contact with air, the oxygen in the air causes its aromas to develop. At this point, sommeliers will say that the wine is woken up.

As stated earlier, the point of an aerator is to hasten the process of oxygenation by increasing the surface area of the wine so that more of it comes into contact with the oxygen. This then provides the wine with a much improved aromatic palette.

Traditionally, a carafe is used to enable the wine to air out. Doing this increases the surface area of the wine that comes into contact with the air, making it larger than what can be gotten inside the bottle.

The traditional process tends to take a couple of hours, making it difficult to simply open a bottle of wine and drink. With a wine aerator, there is no need for that.

Why Get a Wine Aerator?

There are various reasons to consider getting a wine aerator. For one, it has a portable and lightweight design, making it a great choice for just about anyone that loves wine.

Also, because wine tends to go through various developing stages, all with different levels of taste and variants, an aerator aids the wine in achieving its full flavour potential without the long wait time typically associated with using a carafe or decanter.

There are various types of wine aerators, but the one you select will typically depend on your budget and preference. You will have to consider factors such as the ease of use, design, quality, capacity, and material used in constructing the wine aerator.

You also have to consider the type of wine you plan on aerating as each wine type tends to have different needs.

If you want the very best overall wine aerator, look no further than the Vinturi Aerator and Decanter.

Source: Amazon

If you are a bit more price-conscious but still want a wine aerator that offers great value, then you might want to consider the Corkas Wine Aerator.

Source: Amazon

If neither of these two fit the bill for what you want in a wine aerator, you might want to check out our review of the best wine aerator in Canada.

How to Clean Wine Aerator

Taking care of your wine aerator is an important task, one that should not be taken lightly. This is something that every wine aerator owner should be ready to perform if they want the aerator to perform at its best for a very long time.

To ensure the wine aerator performs optimally, you need to keep it clean at all times. To do so, you simply need to follow the steps below:

• Always clean your wine aerator after every use with hot water and a cleaning brush (or cloth). Doing this is the most effective way to avoid the buildup of sediments in the spout. Additionally, the sediments can dry and then begin to stick onto the surface of the aerator. The longer your wine aerator goes without being cleaned, the harder it will be to clean once you get down to it.
• When cleaning your wine aerator, always use warm running water. As soon as you are done with the aerator, you should hold it under your tap, running warm water through the spout. This process should be done for about a minute at most. Swirl the water around to get rid of any sediments that might be present.
• Also, you can use a utensil pipe cleaner to clean the air hole, which the wine drips Using a utensil pipe cleaner can be advantageous when you discover your wine aerator has residue buildup stuck inside the mesh. Warm water alone might not be able to clear it. This is where a utensil pipe cleaner comes in handy, as the tool is designed to help clean cylindrical objects. Doing this with your wine aerator ensures that it is completely clean and ready for the next use.
• When you purchase your wine aerator, it is important that you handle it with care, as having sediment stuck in your wine aerator could stop you from thoroughly enjoying your wine.
• If your aerator is dishwasher safe, then you can run it through a cycle. But make sure to read the owners manual before you do.

Conclusion

As a wine enthusiast, there are a couple of things you should note when caring for a wine aerator. For one, you mustn’t mix new wine with the leftover one in the glass part of the aerator as that could affect the true taste of each wine.

You should also know when it is time to clean your wine aerator. This will provide you with the best chance of having a great-tasting wine in addition to ensuring that your wine aerator will work for a long time to come.

When your wine aerator is not in use, you should invert it while storing. This helps to prevent dust as well as other elements from getting into the wine aerator. Remember to clean your wine aerator after each use.