Spilled Red Wine and How To Clean It Up

And so it happened, the inevitable, the dreaded. While moving some bottles of red wine, one dropped, broke open, and deposited its contents all over the carpet. We could not have been so fortunate as to have dropped it on a wooden or stone floor where the cleanup would have been considerably easier, but not us. Destiny and one of Murphy’s Laws came into play; “if a bottle of red wine falls it will land in the most inappropriate place.” The first thing that happened as the bottle slipped from our hands was to shout, “oh darn” (well, we did clean that up a bit but you get the idea). Luckily, we did manage to clean the mess and not leave any evidence of the catastrophe to be seen on the carpet. This could happen to you and thus, the reason for this column.

The first thing we did was to carefully clear away all of the broken glass that we could find. We then got as many bath towels as we could quickly gather and carefully blotted up as much of the wine as possible, again remaining aware that there might be glass still in the carpet. We put the towels in a bucket after they had sopped up as much of the wine as they could and were now left with a damp, ugly, slightly dangerous, red blob on the carpet. Our next move was to cover the stain with several more layers of towels. On top of the towels we put a plastic garbage bag and the as many heavy items as we could easily pile of top of the garbage bag to absorb any remaining wine and then sat down, bemoaning our fate and contemplated the cost of replacing the carpet.

Several hours later, we removed the weights and towels and proceed to the very important act two. We generously sprayed the effected area with Oxy-Clean stain remover. There was an immediate reaction as the Oxy-clean began to work its “as advertised” miracles; the stain began to lighten. We then washed all of the towels with bleach. Everything in that department went well, and no wine stains were left on the towels; a small victory, although not enough to brighten our spirits. We then went to bed, depressed, downhearted and feeling extremely stupid.

The next morning, when we examined the area where the wine had spilled, THE STAIN WAS GONE with not even a trace of the spilled vintage to be found. Had The Oxy-Clean elves come in the night and cleaned up the mess? No matter how it happened, the stain was gone and we then vacuumed up any glass that may still be in the carpet. Our projected investment into a new carpet could now be diverted to restocking our wine library.

While we are on the subject of cleaning; what about your wine glasses? The literature concerning the cleaning of wine glasses all recommend the use of just plain water. Has just plain water ever cleaned the grease stains off of your dinnerware; we think not. We also realize that today’s “plain water” is loaded with all sorts of chemicals including chlorides and fluorides. These rules, like the one about serving red wine at room temperature, are pure nonsense. Most of today’s better hand and dishwasher detergents contain a wetting agent, which prevents anything including spots, from reaming on the glasses, Having personally tasted wine in glasses cleaned both ways we detected no difference in any of the attributes of the wines we experimented with.

We also mentioned the fallacy of serving red wines at room temperature. The room temperature that determined that fact was a French room of the 1800’s. Those houses were cold and if they had a wine cellar below the house, as most did, it was even colder. We put our unopened red wines, in the fridge about one half hour before serving. Give it a try; it definitely enhances the enjoyment of the wine.