The ETO wine decanter

Two things: Pouring wine into a decanter allows contact with oxygen that opens up a wine that's spent months or years shut inside a bottle. Tannins soften. Aromas climb out. The second job is older and simpler: mature bottles throw sediment, and decanting means you can leave it behind in the bottle rather than in your glass. ETO does both, but then adds one more: sealing the wine in so it keeps for up to two weeks.

Start with one question: what do you want it to do? Is the goal to open up your wine? To seal or save after a glass or two? To look good on the table? To engrave and make it a unique personal gift [link]? Consider how easily it cleans, whether it fits in your fridge, and whether replacement parts exist if you have an accident. ETO is built to cover all these, so you don’t have to choose.

Most decanters are built for the first few hours and nothing beyond, because an open wine has no off switch for aeration. The oxygen drawing out aromas in the first hour is still hard at work in the fourth, and the eighth. With ETO you can push down on the long neck to close the patented seal the moment you stop pouring. That means a bottle opened on Monday is still worth drinking two weeks later, and the last glass tastes as good as the first. Occasionally better, according to the experts who put us to the test.

 Our patented airtight seal can preserve an opened bottle of wine for up to two weeks, helping protect it from the oxygen that causes wine to lose its freshness and character. The exact lifespan will depend on the wine itself and how it’s stored, but ETO is designed to give you considerably more time than an open bottle or conventional decanter.

Our patented sealing system designed to create an airtight barrier between the wine and the outside air. The seal closes perfectly so no further oxygen can reach the wine. It means you can pour a glass, seal ETO, and come back to it days later.

It depends what you want the wine to do next. If the bottle is going to be finished that evening, decanting on its own serves you well. If you'd like to pour a glass on Tuesday and another on Sunday, the seal is what will save the day, because air is what turns a good wine flat and tired. In the UK, we pour away millions of bottles a year. An airtight seal is how you keep yours to enjoy.

Red gets all the attention, but whites and rosés reward decanting more than tradition lets on. A rich white (an oaked chardonnay, a white rioja with some age) all open-up beautifully with some air contact, and even a crisp young rosé gains a little roundness. Serve it cold and keep it cold. Sparkling wines are the exception, and firmly so. The pressure that the bubbles create means ETO isn't the place to keep them.