It often takes hours for tannin-bitter wines to transform into silky smooth delights when decanting. The Aveine Aerator aims to achieve this directly while pouring. We tested what the patented aeration technology delivers.
Enjoying a glass of wine in the evening? And nothing is more superfluous for you than technology, gadgets, and smartphones? Then please read on anyway. The "Aveine Aerator" from France is a bottle attachment that reproduces the finely dosed, often hours-long aeration of wines in a decanter while pouring. The accompanying app even finds out how long the wine of your choice needs. The principle of the aerator: set the time, pour, and enjoy.
The elegantly designed black cardboard box opens quietly and reminds one of an Apple smartphone – probably not entirely coincidentally. The bottle attachment with patented technology made of silicon and aluminum feels pleasantly heavy in the hand, and the display lights up automatically. As a basic function, you can set the slider from one to 24 hours and thus pre-select the aeration time that the aerator reproduces while pouring through precisely dosed oxygen supply. However, the award-winning device also has an ambitious list price of 449 euros. In the test, we want to find out what the Aveine Aerator has to offer.
As a first step, we first install the accompanying app on the smartphone or tablet. It immediately finds the aerator via Bluetooth. Now you photograph the label of the wine to be aerated with the app. The aerator app recognizes it immediately and sets the decanting time calculated by an algorithm based on professional evaluations via Bluetooth on the device. But what does the digital device offer compared to classic decanting? Since only the amount of wine that flows into the glass is aerated with the innovative process, we poured an un-aerated wine into the second glass and let it rest in it. This allowed us to directly compare the condition of the wine over time. In our test, it is the "Por tí" from Luzón from the Spanish region of Jumilla. Three hours of aeration is the indicated value that the system states with one hundred percent "Aeration reliability". So that should be reliable.
Directly from the bottle, there are plenty of ripe black cherries and strawberries, along with some tree bark. The acidity is pleasantly fresh, the tannin is a bit angular but fine. After three hours, the fruit is softer and denser with a touch of cassis, along with fine herbs, licorice – and the hoped-for mild tannins. Another hour later: Here, the tannins are even a bit harder than before decanting. After twelve hours: The wine appears dull. The Aveine has clearly been right in this test. This is exactly how one wishes for the tuning of a young wine.
If the app recognizes the label correctly, it provides additional analysis data along with information such as origin and location: 15 percent alcohol, 90 percent Monastrell, and 10 Cabernet Sauvignon are correct. However, nothing is known about style, barrel aging, aging potential, and whether it is organic or vegan. Aveine also provides a link to Google Maps with the exact location, opening hours, and phone number of the winery. However, it quickly became clear in the test: Often these data are completely missing. There are also errors: For example, we found incorrect alcohol content or incomplete information about the grape varieties.
For the 2017 Chablis from organic winemaker Jean-Marc Brocard, the Aveine Aerator also finds it, but only with the 2018 vintage. With a reliability of 75 percent, it recommends a three-hour aeration time for it. Directly from the bottle, the Chardonnay has notes of chalk and a bit of cardboard, vegetal, smoky, mushrooms. On the palate, it is dense, very fine wood, pink grapefruit, ripe Cox Orange. With an oxygen supply corresponding to three hours of aeration, we are in another world. Gunpowder predominates in the nose, a bit of apple compote and black pepper. On the tongue, fine butter, ripe fruit, a touch of tropical notes. After twelve hours, the gunpowder has dissipated, with plant aromas, a bit of wet stone, tropical fruit. After 24 hours, the whole thing becomes even weaker. Almost all our tests proceeded similarly reliably here and with the Luzón.
The story of the company founder Nicolas Naigeon is somewhat reminiscent of Gregg Lambrecht, the inventor of Coravin. As a child of a Burgundy winemaker family, he studied engineering and specialized in biomedicine. During this time, he encountered a method for enriching blood with oxygen during heart surgeries. This was the birth of the patent – and Naigeon's business idea. Unlike other pourers that aerate the flowing wine depending on the flow rate and are not adjustable, the Aveine doses with its electric oxygen pump very precisely, if necessary even significantly more than is possible with the so-called "Venturi effect." This allows the period to be precisely reproduced that the wine should remain in the decanter before pouring. "We inject precisely calibrated air bubbles in number and size," explains Nicolas Naigeon the principle, "and they are reproducible at any time.".
The accompanying app is very professionally designed. You can create a personal profile with a picture and information of your choice, connect with other users, follow them, be followed – or keep your profile private. Many features can be set, such as push notifications for new comments, followers, and updates. Who can see my profile picture? Who can write to me, read my comments, my statistics? With reviews, you earn recognition. After about 38 entries, you become a "Wine seeker" in a rain of confetti. The wines whose labels you have recognized are also stored. This way, you can compare the selected aeration time with the community average. This user data also expands the database of the wine database.
"Every tasting note is checked for quality by one of our 15 team members and only then used for the algorithm," explains Naigeon. The algorithm calculates the aeration time based on vintage, grape variety, origin, and other parameters. "In the future, we want to make even finer distinctions," he reports, "and even the oldest aerator will receive every update." So waiting for a new model is not worth it.
However, Nicolas Naigeon does not just want to provide a wine app that complements the device, but confidently defines it as the "gold standard social media platform for wine." However, even large tasting apps like Vivino and Cellartracker have never managed that. During the testing period, almost only professionals, sommeliers, and wine enthusiasts with a lot of expertise were active in the community. Therefore, the tasting notes were also very useful.
However, there is still plenty of potential for improvement with Aveine: In our extended sample with over 50 wine searches, not every label photo was a hit. Obviously, the database is still not large enough. The system works best with French wines, less so with Italians and Spaniards. The number of wines from California, Germany, Portugal, Greece, and other countries is rather meager. For example, a world-famous wine like "ViñaSol" from Torres was just as hard to find as the Chassagne-Montrachet Premier Cru from the globally active Burgundy trading house Louis Jadot.
Who is the Aveine Aerator suitable for? The patented aeration technology works very well. However, the greatest potential lies in the professional sector: a sommelier who knows his wines presents them directly after pouring in optimally decanted condition, as do winemakers and dealers without waiting time in front of their customers. For very old vintages that are often aerated too long, the device could also save some mature wine. For wine lovers, social media affinity is advantageous, but the app is understandable for everyone. Although not necessarily affordable. A small consolation: Anyone who buys the Aveine Aerator despite the price almost certainly understands enough about wine. Therefore, one can also rely quite well on its aeration recommendations.
For professionals, the investment can be worthwhile due to the reduced effort for decanting and cleaning the decanters. For private enthusiasts, however, it is an expensive but quite fine pleasure.