Reader Sorin from Edmonton, Canada sent me a couple videos he has recently made but this one really impressed me as a great wine hack worthy of Lifehacker. Let us know what you think in the comments but have you ever seen anyone do this? No, me neither

Open A Bottle Of Wine Without Corkscrew - The funniest videos clips are here

We have all been there. You open the bottle and pour your first glass. The color is almost always fine but you know you are in trouble as soon as you smell the wine. Musty, no fruit, flat, wet cardboard… yes, my friends, you have a corked wine on your hands.

This is caused by a cork tainted with Trichloroanisole, or TCA for short. Some also blame barrels and contaminated wood in the cellar but to me it’s mostly the corks fault (after all, we don’t call it, “barreled”). Somewhere between 3 and 7% of all wine sealed under cork are affected by this problem and there is not a whole lot a winery can do to prevent it but adopt screw caps.

So it was with a great deal of skepticism that I scrutinized the following wine hack sent to me by a reader. Since it was published in the Los Angeles Times, I will give it the benefit of the doubt but it seems unbelievable.

Basically, the article calls for pouring the corked wine over plastic wrap in a pitcher and soaking for a few minutes. The author claims that the TCA is attracted to the plastic and once the plastic is removed the wine can be enjoyed without this defect. This is either the greatest wine hack of all time or an elaborate hoax. I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has tried this with or without success.

Until I try this on my next corked bottle, Vino Emptor

I haven’t noticed many wine hacks of late, so when I read Jathan’s post over the weekend I was intrigued. It seems that the good folks over at the Spectator have not blocked Google bot access to some of their premium content (most likely by design to gain higher page rank). So all you need to do is Google an article’s name – freely available on their website – and then click on the “Cached” link on the Google search page to read the full article. There seems to be a delay of a couple of days, but that is a small price to pay for the content.

Some examples:
Lost Treasure Found in Santa Barbara
Guigal’s Côte-Rôties Show Their Pedigree
Tasting Highlights: 2001 Brunellos
ZAP Wrap-up

This only works for the “Headlines” and not other premium content on the site, so the hack does not replace a subscription. I’m also seeing if this can be exploited at other wine pay sites.

Cheers, Jathan!

Now here’s some technology that is likely to make things better for keeping track of large wine collections that looks to be competitive with CellarTracker. The Wine Collector 150 supports Bluetooth and reads wine bar codes. It’s Mac or Windows software then populates the producer, varietal and other metadata about the wine which is saved to their online database. Hopefully it supports export for those of us who prefer CellarTracker and I’m sure there are other bar code solutions that are more cost effective than $200-300 dollars. Looks like something to check out, however, if you have several hundreds, or thousands, of bottles to keep track of.

Later the same day I posted about wine hacks, Lifehacker posted a great one involving a camera phone and a bottle of wine. Most excellent, since I just got a Nokia 3220. The quality is not great, but it just might be good enough for our purposes

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I’m a big fan of the blog Lifehacker that gives tips on “hacking” everyday items (OK, sometimes they also hack tech). This got me thinking how “hacks”, ingenious solutions to everyday problems, could extend to the wine world. A quick search of Lifehacker turned up just one example of a wine hack: having a vintage chart in your wallet. Hmm, nice tip, but not in the same league as the hack I blogged about last week from Slashfood. Google searches also turned up very little except the term “hacks” being used as slang for writer.

So I am on the look out for any wine hacks you find and have setup a new category to make them easy to find here… just post to comments or pop me an email. I’ve also got a few hacks in mind to blog from time to time.

From Slashfood’s Top 25 Food Hacks post, a useful tip on rapidly chilling wine. The ol’ ice bucket and rock salt trick and 6 minutes later you are enjoying that super cool Riesling. Yummy!