Comments on: What do to with wine flotsam and jetsam? [reader mail]

By: Wine Glass Crown

Wine Glass Crown — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 01:15:59 +0000

Check out wineglasscrown.webs.com for the new invention for keeping bugs out of a wine glass!!

By: Tracy Kellner

Tracy Kellner — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:48:27 +0000

Old server trick: take a paper bev nap (cocktail napkin), fold in half diagonally and gently ‘sweep’ around the top edge of the wine around the glass. the particles should ‘gravitate’ towards the napkin and pick up quite easily.

By: Billy Smith

Billy Smith — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 22:12:48 +0000

Check out pardonthatvine.com Great new video Blog…..very unique!!

By: Bob W.

Bob W. — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:57:38 +0000

But never do this into a stiff breeze!!

By: Morton Leslie

Morton Leslie — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:20:36 +0000

If you toss the wine up in a stiff breeze maybe they will separate like wheat from chaff.

By: Laurie

Laurie — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 03:22:05 +0000

And speaking of soap… absolutely NOTHING worse than seeing the floating sheen of soap residue distorting the taste of a nice wine. A good restaurant should never let this happen.

By: marc

marc — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 01:08:41 +0000

here’s a trick for the fruit flies – sacrifice a glass of wine with a little soap. wine attracts the flies, soap won’t let them fly away. a fruit-bomb of a cheap shiraz seems most appropriate to the task.

By: Dale

Dale — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 02:26:53 +0000

@erol…depends on the size of the bug. A fruit fly, while irritating (even with the several that seem to happen at once), is quite happily drunken, if not flat out dead drunk. A June bug? Well, there’s a critter reaching for the safety pole…and I definitely *don’t* want it crawling up my helpful finger.

Stinky bugs; moths with their own form of oily, scaley particulate…blech!! The worst may have been trying to finger out a firefly and squishing the yellow iridescence up the inside of the glass. Count that one on too much wine coupled with grilling in the environs of rural Illinois.

By: Erol Senel

Erol Senel — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 01:24:53 +0000

I actually had to deal with this tonight with an ’07 Seghesio Zin and had some BBQ sauce on my finger. Made for a nice pairing!

The real question is, what do you do if it is a bug? Do you still catch it on the side of the glass or dive in and get it out?

By: Dylan

Dylan — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 00:11:30 +0000

If you’re truly concerned, passing the wine through a simple strainer should do the trick.

By: Benito

Benito — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 03:04:57 +0000

In polite company I’ll use the edge of a napkin or a clean fork/spoon to remove the offending particle, but it never really bothers me much. If you’ve spent any extended time backpacking, you’ve had the joy of filtering twigs, algae, and mosquito larvae out of water before purifying it with iodine crystals (which turns it a lovely shade of yellow). You learn to strain out any remaining particulate with your teeth or, if you prefer, placing a clean patch of t-shirt or bandanna over the mouth of the canteen.

Definitions of “clean”, “clear”, and “drinkable” change quite a bit when you get to the point of catching rainwater, melting snow, or deciding if it’s worth the risk to keep moving until you find a running stream.

By: Weston

Weston — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:41:52 +0000

I agree Joel fruit flies are the worst! I think I almost got rid my mine with windex..we shall see..

oh I usually use shopsticks they just stick most of the time

By: kelkeagy

kelkeagy — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:34:01 +0000

I usually just use my fingertip to trap it on the side of the glass and then pull it out (kind of like you would do with egg shell in your egg whites). Either that or just ignore it and enjoy the glass anyway. Probably just depends on how much I’ve already consumed…

By: Joel Burt

Joel Burt — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 20:36:16 +0000

Fruit flies are the worst!

By: Dale

Dale — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:28:54 +0000

Floaters don’t bother me nearly as much as not catching the sediment at the bottom of a glass, whether it’s tannic dredge or precipitated carbonic. Nothing ruins that last splash as much as that!