This is an odd blog posting for me, as I believe that almost all wine gadgets are almost entirely ridiculous. You may not share my view, and I don’t want to rain on anybody’s parade during the holiday season, but to my mind, a $10 corkscrew works every bit as well as one costing $300, and things like wine-themed neckties and vine stump coffee tables aren’t even worthy of derision. My advice to newly enthralled wine lovers is to buy a few decent glasses and spend the rest of your discretionary funds on…wait for it…wine!
With that noted, however, I’ve got one gadget that I use every day when I’m not on the road, which is by far the most effective wine aerator I’ve ever tried, which is the full bottle version of The Aermate. It certainly merits mention in this gift-giving season. The thing is basically a stainless 
steel wand with a bulb at the top (essentially the same as what you’d find on a turkey baster) and an inch-long cylinder at the bottom with a gazillion little pores. After uncorking a bottle and pouring a healthy glass out of it, one then inserts the want and pumps air into it from the bottom, which sends countless little bubbles into the wine, which foams very noticeably. (This is why you need to pour out a glass first…otherwise, you’ll overflow liquid from the bottle all over your counter.) The fancy winemaking name for this process and effect is, “micro-oxygenation,” and it really does work to get young red wines to open and become much more expressive very quickly.
The effectiveness of this $30 product (current best price is on aermate.com) is almost completely limited to young red wines, or older reds that wouldn’t likely throw a lot of sediment (which you wouldn’t want to agitate by using the Aermate…go with a decanter instead). In case you are suspicious about my enthusiasm, let me note that the manufacturer’s claim that the device is also effective for spirits (which are listed at length on the box in which the Aermate is sold) is silly, and that its usefulness for white wines is quite minimal.
However, for young reds, this thing is terrific. After the foam in the bottle subsides and settles, I use a cheapo stainless funnel (available at many hardware or home furnishing stores) to pour the glass back into the bottle, and voila…no decanter to wash, no confusion about which wine is in which decanter…just a very effectively aerated young red wine (or five or twelve, as is often the case when I’m reviewing) in the bottle in which it was sold. The only cleanup requires is a quick rinse of the perforated cylinder under running water (while pumping) to assure that the pores don’t get clogged with dried wine. There’s also a “portable” version, but hauling one of these around is too geeky even for me, and that item is too short to be fully effective unless you’re aerating glass by glass, which seems silly. Buy two for yourself, and one for each of your wine loving friends.
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