New Gadgets for Wine & Food

I love gadgets..not that I buy many of them (mostly received as gifts - always welcome ;-) but I still love them. So while browsing (yes, I do actual work) through the infinity of the web, I came across www.hammacher.com and found these 'little handy things'. Don't they look cool ....

1. The Inverted Wine Decanter. This decanter allows you to remove the sediment from and increase the surface area of your favorite bottle of red wine by pouring it over a glass globe that rests on a mesh filter into a suspended glass receptable, resulting in wine that has been properly exposed to oxygen. When poured over the 31/2" diam. hand-blown Romanian glass globe, wine is both agitated and its surface area is increased by 381/2" sq., releasing its bouquet and softening its tannins. The stainless steel mesh filter screens out sediment and cork residue, and will not infuse the wine with odors or tastes. The receptacle has a stainless steel lever-spigot operated by pressure from the upthrust rim of a glass, allowing you to pour wine without touching the decanter. The decanter is suspended by a powder-coated wrought-iron frame that rests on a sturdy metal and Italian marble base.



2. The Oenophile's Personal Winery.This is the automated home winery that vinifies up to four cases of wine using traditional winemaking techniques combined with modern oenological technology, conducting the entire post-harvest process in its stainless steel chamber, cold soaking, pressing, and fermenting the grapes, and aging the wine for six to twelve months (or less, depending on personal preference). Immediately following harvest, Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon grapes are crushed, frozen, and sent to your home, ensuring your vintage is made using only the finest premium grapes. The system automatically monitors the entire winemaking process including fermentation, Brix (grape sugar level), and temperature, and wirelessly transmits the information to a PC, allowing you to log, graph, and analyze the information using the included software, ensuring optimal conditions for your preferred wine taste. It prompts you when to smell and taste the fermenting must or press down the grape skins, and the software has easy-to-follow instructions, offering techniques to produce vintages with specific characteristics from bold and fruity to delicate and silky, and the software's interface allows you to share winemaking tips and results with a global community of fellow users. The wine maker automatically controls the fermentation heat and the aging temperature using thermoelectric heating and cooling, and the grape press automatically lifts the grape pomace out of the basin, ensuring ease of clean up.


3. The Tumbling Vacuum Marinator.Winner of Popular Science Magazine's Best of What's New Award in Home Technology, this marinator creates a vacuum inside the barrel that causes the food's fibers to stretch and become porous, while paddles inside of the rotating barrel flip and coat the food with marinade. Unlike conventional techniques that only flavor the surface and require 24 hours of marinating for thick cuts of meat, the automated marinator infuses restaurant-quality flavor and succulence into a 5-lb. brisket in less than 20 minutes, while using half the amount of marinade required for pan or bag soaking. Using the same technology to facilitate tenderization that the food industry has applied for 30 years, the marinator allows meat, fish or vegetables to absorb up to 20% of their weight in marinade without extended preparation. Barrel holds up to 5-lbs. of food and is dishwasher safe.