There’s always a moment of deep remorse when half a bottle of that lovely pinot you opened on Saturday goes down the drain by Tuesday. It might seem like the ultimate first world problem, but in the UK alone, wine accounts for 50 million liters of waste every year—that’s enough to fill 333 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Understanding the scale of the problem, in 2011 industrial designer Tom Cotton set about to solve the problem of wine waste. After over five years of research, 60 prototypes and talks with a number of manufacturers, the eto wine preservation decanter launched and surpassed it’s Kickstarter funding goal within its first 32 hours.
Inspired by the wine preservation method of transferring leftover wine into a smaller, sealed container to minimize air contact, Cotton set about working on a design solution that would effectively maintain the quality of the wine. The final product, available in stainless steel or copper finish, is a borosilicate glass vessel that can be used as a decanter to oxygenate and serve wine with a lid and silicone valve that will automatically seal and lock when it reaches the surface of the unused wine.
Best of all, eto dissembles for ease of cleaning and maintenance and parts can be replaced individually if damaged. The product has the hallmarks of a considered product from a designer with years of experience. As Cotton writes in the campaign, “eto has taken several years to perfect, as we have built multiple prototypes to improve and simplify its design. We now have a product with minimal parts, precision-engineered seam-free glass, and high grade, anti-corrosion stainless steel that is both durable and aesthetic.”
Although the early bird solo decanters have sold out, there’s still time to get the earlybird DUO at a special Kickstarter price of £109.
