The Encork stopper seems to keep wine fresh after the bottle has been opened
Tyler Rice may be on to something, and he used an apple to do it.
Rice is one of the people behind a wine closure called Encork. It aims to fill the void between the ultra-pricey Coravin and the more simple and less expensive Vacu Vin-style systems, which are used to close open bottles of wine and to keep the wine from oxidizing. No pumping is required and Encork doesn’t need pricey accessories like argon capsules or replacement needles.
Instead, it’s a plastic stopper with a tab on the part that goes into the bottle. Remove the tab, insert the stopper, and a compound on the bottom of the stopper is supposed to absorb the oxygen in the open bottle and slow oxidation.
Which is where the apple comes in.
Oxidation in wine works the same way it does with an apple. Cut an apple, expose the flesh, and it turns brown; the same thing happens to wine (you can sometimes see the browning in white wine). Wine also picks up an almost brandy-ish taste. When Rice and his colleagues tested the Encork compound, they put an apple core in a wine bottle. If Encork didn’t work, the core would turn brown.
It didn’t.
“There was a lot of skepticism about whether this would work,” says Rice, “and there has been a very positive reaction that it works as well as it does.”
Which it does seem to do. I can’t vouch for the 99 percent oxygen removal that the brand claims, but it worked when I used the sample Rice sent me. I closed a variety of crummy sample wines with Encork, leaving each bottle about half full. My thinking? That well-made wine can hold out for several days without oxidizing because it is well made; poorly-made wines, like the samples, should oxidize almost immediately.
But none of them did, and each tasted remarkably the same the next day. In fact, one rose – slightly sweet and a bit tannic – was still slightly sweet and a bit tannic when I opened it 24 hours later.
A box of 12 Encork stoppers costs $30, or $2.50 each, and can only be used once to prevent oxidation (though it’s a perfectly fine stopper if all you want to do is close an open bottle). The price makes the product better suited for wine costing more than $15, and I can see the Big Guy using it for his $18 red Bordeauxs.
Regardless, it’s much easier to use than the Vacu Vin (which I use) and certainly more affordable than the Coravin, Who knew an apple core would pay off like that?