Almost two years ago, I took a flyer on a crowd-funded, product in development. The idea was similar to one I’d had myself previously, a wine-preservation device that does the job entirely mechanically—no gas, no vacuum. After various delays due to multiple rounds of tweaks to the materials and tooling, the product finally arrived from the producer, eto, three weeks ago.

The eto decanter received a reddot award for design in 2018. Richard Hemming MW, of JancisRobinson.com, tested an early prototype for a week and found the wine didn’t change perceptibly over that period of time. What would my experience be with more rigorous testing of a near-production model?

What is eto?

The concept is fairly simple. eto is essentially a bottle which holds 750ml of wine. There’s a plunger in the top, which, when pressed down, forces all air out of the bottle until the plunger actually makes contact with the wine. With no wine-air contact, oxidation should be virtually nil.

The devil is in the details. Even a tiny air gap would make such a product useless. It either prevents oxidation or it doesn’t.

It was that need to be absolutely air-tight which led to the long delay in product availability. The product is necessarily much more complicated than a simple bottle and plunger. There are a lot of parts which need to mate together perfectly and several moving parts as well. Getting very tight tolerances, especially with glass, is quite difficult. Numerous, minute adjustments to design and tooling took place over nearly two years.

Fortunately, based on my testing, the product works very well now. And it’s gorgeous.

Using eto

The main part of the bottle—they call it a decanter—is high-quality glass. The top of the decanter, which screws onto the glass portion, is highly polished metal. The tops come in two colors, silver and copper. I got one of each.

Within the top piece is a telescoping tube, a little more than an inch in diameter. It’s made of the same metal as the top. The tube serves as both pouring spout and plunger handle. Various parts of the assembly include rubber gaskets to ensure tight seals.

The whole thing, including all the gaskets, comes apart for cleaning. The glass portion is dishwasher safe. I sometimes found it challenging to get the top to unscrew from the glass bottle. It can also be difficult to get the plunger/gasket back into the bottle. But both tasks are doable and those tight fits are what makes the product work. [The eto comes with a clear, well-written and -illustrated user guide which I found helpful.]

My test results

To test the devices,  I tried the silver one with a white wine and the copper one with a red. I intentionally chose wines which would be susceptible to oxidation—low acid in the case of the white, moderate tannin and low acid for the red. 

I tried a glass of each wine upon first opening and took notes. Then, I put them into the decanters, pushed out the air, and refrigerated them. After a week, I took a partial glass from each and took notes again. I repeated this after two weeks and after three weeks.

There was no decline, or even change, in the wines’ color, aroma, or flavor after three weeks. (I didn’t try the bottles without refrigerating, nor with aged wine, but will do so in the coming months and post an update.) The eto performance is much better than the vacuum wine preservers I’ve tried. With those, the wine fades noticeably after a week or so. And the vacuum process itself can pull some character out of the wine.

eto bills their device as more than just a non-oxidizing storage vessel. They position it as a decanter and aerator. It’s certainly an extremely attractive decanter. There’s no special apparatus for aeration though, just a rounded lip, and I believe the effect is very minor. 

Pricey, but good value

The product is still in pre-release. You can order them at Indiegogo.The expected ship date is late July. The silver (stainless steel) ones are $98 and the copper $111. There are slight discounts for ordering multiple units. [I don’t get any compensation for sales and paid full, pre-release price for the products.]

These aren’t low prices. However, I think the eto decanters offer very good value for people who regularly open, but don’t immediately finish, high-quality wines. Many crystal decanters sell for at least this much, some for much more. And they don’t preserve wine. Wine preservation systems which use gas to eliminate the oxygen are expensive too. A base-level Coravin is $200 and you have to buy cartridges.

Further Reading

You may be interested in my article on which wine glasses critics use.

Copyright Fred Swan 2019. Photo courtesy eto. All rights reserved.