Have you ever gone to pour yourself a glass of wine from a bottle that tasted perfectly good a few days ago, only to find the taste is now completely different — a little sour and even acidic? Or perhaps you’ve experienced the feeling of wanting to open up a bottle of wine, but you hesitate because you know you’ll be racing to finish the bottle before it goes bad. What’s a wine lover to do?
It seems Syphon, a company that just launched its Kickstarter campaign, has a solution. The company has envisioned a device that will cork your bottle and use argon to make your vino last a lot longer than it would otherwise.
To understand how Syphon plans to change your wine-drinking habits, you have to understand why wine goes bad so quickly after the bottle is opened. Wine reacts in such a way with oxygen that causes the taste of the vino to change. Argon is an inert gas that wineries already use to help preserve the wine when it’s being bottled. In theory, argon should also work as a way to preserve the flavor of the wine even after the bottle is opened.
After taking off the cork of your wine bottle, you can plug the spout of the Syphon device into the bottle. Grip the lever and give it a squeeze, and the Syphon will force argon into the bottle to keep oxygen out. Without oxygen, your wine won’t get spoiled, and the taste will be preserved for far longer. Syphon creator Daniel Fukuba claims that the Syphon can allow your bottle to last up to 30 days.
The Syphon isn’t the only product on the market that claims to preserve a bottle of wine after it’s been opened. The Coravin, for example, is a device that pierces the cork to push argon into the bottle. It retails for $200 though, and Fukuba wants to offer a lower-priced device. According to the Kickstarter campaign, interested buyers can get their hands on a Syphon and two argon capsules for $119, with an expected shipping date in April 2019. If the campaign, which is asking for $350,000, successfully gets funded, the Syphon will cost $149, with replacement argon capsules selling for $6 each. The company says each capsule will last for 15 glasses of wine.
Do keep in mind that Kickstarter projects are never a sure thing, so contribute with caution.
