VinoChapeau: Does it Work?

October 29th, 2008

One of the hot topics of post-WBC debate is the VinoChapeau, a new wine enhancement tool. As its name suggests, the VinoChapeau is essentially a hat, for your wine. It’s a small, polymer plastic disc that clings to the top of your glass and is meant to magnify the wine’s aromas. By placing the VinoChapeau on your glass, swirling, and waiting 15 seconds, the concentration of aromas is said to double.

I met the engineer during Alder Yarrow and Tom Wark’s seminar. A nice guy, though his question of what a blog is and what Wine Enthusiast is, puzzled me. Maybe not everybody has heard of Wine Enthusiast but if you’re at the Wine Bloggers Conference, you should probably know what a blog is, or at least ask in advance. I’ll admit these questions didn’t help his credibilty when he passed me the VinoChapeau. I was a 100% skeptic.

So I took it home and came pretty close to throwing it out, then heard that the thing might actually work. Of course, being in the wine accessory business, I had to see for myself.

My sister and I both tested it out tonight and agreed that it does in fact, work! We used a Quinta do Crasto Reserva 2001, from the Douro. The aromas have softened with age but after a little cap-off with the Vino Chapeau, they did in fact, start to pop. Before using the Chapeau I got a lot more oak, the fruit aromas were subdued. After using the Chapeau, I got some sweet, black fruits, and more oak, though it was shadowed by the fruit.

You know what else worked? Saran wrap. I did the same experiment with plastic wrap and it yielded similar results. Saran wrap doubles the concentration of the wines aromas as well! I hate to be a naysayer, but VinoChapeau doesn’t get my vote as a unique product. What do you think? Did you try it out?

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Filed under Wine Accessories | Comments (14)

14 Responses to “VinoChapeau: Does it Work?”

  1. John Witherspoon on October 29, 2008 9:43 pm

    way to throw the control (saranwrap) in there for scientific purposes. I haven’t tried mine yet, I’ll let ya know.

    later
    John

  2. Dirty on October 30, 2008 7:49 am

    I tried it at the sponsor tables at check-in. I couldn’t tell a difference. They had it on such a big wine, a Copain Zin that was already overly-aromatic and nostril burning hot. I wanted to try this on something tame.

    I may have to stock up on plastic wrap!

    Funny questions about a what is a blog and Wine Enthusiast!

    Oh boy….

  3. Erika on October 30, 2008 8:57 am

    Thanks for the comment, Dirty! Yea, that’s why this aged Douro was a good test… since it needed a little boost in aromatics, not sure why they were testing it on a Zin! That seems silly.

  4. Taster B on October 30, 2008 9:01 am

    I love that picture! LOL I haven’t tried mine yet either! I keep forgetting–home from conference for 3 days and still haven’t gone through the shwag bag!

  5. winehiker on October 30, 2008 9:29 am

    I played with the VinoChapeau last night and tweeted about it. You must have written this post almost immediately after that, Erika! Wow.

    Twisted Oak’s winemaker, Scott Klann, saw my tweet on Facebook and suggested I try a used CD case. So I experimented with both on a Cinnabar Petit Verdot 2004 and a Cinnabar Cabernet Franc 2004 over the period of an hour. The VinoChapeau won, hands down; I suspect the CD case leaked air.

    I left a little of the Cab. Franc in a glass and covered it overnight with the VinoChapeau. This morning, it’s just as aromatically enticing as it was last night. Right now, however, I’m sipping coffee; we’ll see what an entire day does.

  6. Lenn on October 30, 2008 10:04 am

    I didn’t GET one of these because I never got my goody bag!

    There are gadgets for just about everything in the wine world, but I’m curious to try plastic wrap now!

  7. Diane Letulle on October 30, 2008 10:29 am

    Erika, I agree it works…but, so does anything else that traps air in the glass. When I took classes with Kevin Zraly, he trained us to put the palm of our hand firmly over the glass to seal out the air, then swirl, then stick our nose all the way in the glass. Voila–tons of aroma. Portable, cheap, and always with you.

  8. Erika Strum on October 30, 2008 10:35 am

    @winehiker that’s funny about the CD case!

    @Lenn I’m still upset about that

    @Diane Kevin Zraly’s classes are a ton of fun.

  9. Joel on October 30, 2008 5:21 pm

    @Erika, @Lenn – why didn’t you tell me? We had some left over! Sorry. Next year you’ll get 2 :-)

    @Erika – did you see the Flikr pool for the WBC:

    http://www.flickr.com/groups/929364@N21/

  10. adam strum on October 31, 2008 3:23 am

    Great post! I gotta try it.

    Please give it to Josh for a test.

    Do you think there is a market for this product? Sounds more enticing than using Saran Wrap. After all this year we will probably sell 50,000
    Vinturis! This is a real number!

  11. Taster B on October 31, 2008 9:16 am

    Hi Erika, I pulled mine out last night and tried it with some cheap Bordeaux. It definitely brought out the cheap chemically aromas in the wine. ;)
    I will say that the Vino Chapeau is very portable. I’ll probably use mine next time I go to a tasting since bringing saran wrap isn’t that practical. :)

  12. Steve Heimoff on October 31, 2008 3:21 pm

    I tried it at WBC and it did work! However — I would not use them at home. Just another tchotchkey that’s not needed. Can you imagine a nice party where everybody’s playing with their VineChapeau?

  13. Tim on November 1, 2008 9:54 am

    I did try it and found that it works. I’d agree that you could do the same with a plastic wrap, but you’re likely going to throw out that plastic wrap versus this being something you would reuse.

    It’s a fun idea and I can see using it to do tastings for wines I review when the nose is tight and I want to explore the aromas more closely. But I can’t see using this casually in any way. Imagine having a chapeau on you’re wine glass at dinner… no way.

  14. Randy Cunningham on November 2, 2008 7:15 pm

    Hey Erika –
    Thanks for the post and chatter about Vino Chapeau. That afternoon after hearing WE my disjointed sentences were this engineer’s attempt to bide time to find a nearby phone booth to change quickly into my sales and marketing ’super hero’ outfit. With no phone booth in site, my efforts turned out a somewhat less than super hero sales pitch. Didn’t realize my response implied I wasn’t familiar with the WE publication. I’ve been into wine now for 15+ yrs and making wine at CrushPad in SF since the 2004 vintage.

    I’m jazzed to see all the chatter the wine bloggers have generated about Vino Chapeau. Hopefully your readers will see the value, practicality, and reusability of Vino Chapeau discs. I appreciate all of your comments, please keep’m coming!

    Lenn – shoot me your contact info and I’ll be glad to send you a sample. randy@vinochapeau.com

    Joel – Next year… more phone booths!

    Cheers,
    Randy

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