Life
This Sticker Will Improve Your Cheap Wine
Do you ever wish that you could improve the taste of cheap wine with a magic sticker? Allow me to introduce what I consider to be the wine-lovers' equivalent of Cinderella's fairy godmother. With just a bippity boppity boo, your stash of Two-Buck Chuck can be transformed into Sir Charles, laird of ye fancy wine. Winos, meet Elevie, a reusable wine maturing badge that sticks to your glass, and makes your drink taste better in just five minutes. Yes, really.
Currently, Elevie is entrenched in fund-mode at Kickstarter, and is looking to raise $10,000 by the beginning of October. But how does this sorcery actually work, you might be asking. How does this little decal take an almost cringeworthingly cheap bottle of red, and age it to perfection in less time than it takes you to get dressed?
Allow me to break down the science. The mostly-silicone badge sticks to the side of your wine glass, and condenses the different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that are bouncing around your apartment (like UV rays and visible light) into useful infrared waves that trigger rapid interactions between the molecules in your glass. These molecular interactions are the same ones that slowly mature wine in a bottle, but the concentrated infrared waves channeled by the badge speed the maturation process up so that, in just five minutes, you can perform the ancient party trick of turning wine into better wine.
If you want one of these badges to try out yourself, head on over to Kickstarter and make a pledge of $29 or more — that's currently the only way to get your hands on one. In the meantime, here are four more ways to make your wine taste better.
1. Serve your cheap white as cold as possible without freezing it
For you incredibly impatient people like me, that means buying whatever is already chilled in the store, and popping it in the freezer for a few minutes when you get home. The colder your white wine, the less you'll notice any unpleasant flavors.
2. Aerate your cheap reds, because it actually makes a difference
Even if you don't have one of those fancy aerator caps, dumping your cheaper reds into a larger decanter and letting it sit for a while will transform the flavor of your wine with good ol' oxygen.
3. Mix things with your wine to make an even better cocktail
Create a sangria, punch, or mulled wine from your cheaper varietal, and watch them work their real magic. Wine cocktails are what your cheap wine was made for. And who doesn't love a good sangria?
4. Drink your better wine first, and then drink the cheap stuff
If you drink your nicer wine first, the flavors in your slightly less tasty option will be muted by the magic of the first bottle. That's just like wine-drinking 101.
What does the perfect glass of wine look like? Check out Bustle on YouTube.
