IT REALLY WORKS!
The Wine Clip
by James Riswick

From the man selling magic beans to just about every wacky weight loss scheme, we’ve been taught to be wary of things that are too good to be true. As we make our way through Brookstone or flip through the in-flight SkyMall catalogue, all those gadgets seem so promising, yet ultimately we have a gut feeling that we’d be throwing our money away. Naturally then, we were skeptical about the Wine Clip, a magnetic device that is supposed to improve the taste of wine.

Yet sometimes it pays to take a chance on such things, as this nifty gadget is a very pleasant surprise, working exactly as advertised by actually improving the taste of wine—particularly younger reds. The idea of using magnets to treat fluids is not new, and although even its makers don’t exactly know how it works, it is believed that the large, polymerized tannins in certain wines that normally result in a high astringency are broken up or changed by the Clip’s magnetic field.

We also noticed that just pouring a low-price, ordinary-tasting Cabernet Sauvignon through the Clip gives the impression that it has been decanted (in both taste and aroma). The wine immediately had new layers of complexity and a rounder, richer, more fruit forward flavor. The makers of the Wine Clip say this is because oxygen is highly attracted to magnetic fields, which could explain why wine seems to more rapidly aerate after passing through this miracle gadget. For those who get headaches after drinking red wine, we discovered that the Wine Clip can eliminate those, too.

We think that the Clip works best on low- to mid-range tannic reds, although a quick test with "Two-Buck Chuck" showed that even magnets can’t help that swill. The Wine Clip really is incredible, and for casual wine lovers who don’t necessarily know the difference between the nose and bouquet, it borders on a must-buy. After all, turning a $10 bottle of wine into a $20 bottle is worth way more than a pile of magic beans.