In recent years there has been a great increase in wine consumption. As more people have become familiar with better quality wines, they have also become sensitive to the degradation which occurs when an open bottle of wine is recorked and reused at a later time. The problem appears to be that when a wine bottle is opened for an initial pouring, oxygen in the air enters the bottle and is trapped there when the bottle is recorked. The trapped oxygen apparently chemically interacts with the wine remaining in the bottle, causing changes in the taste, aroma, and color of the wine. Thus, when the bottle is reopened at a later date, the quality of the wine is found to be significantly degraded.
In some commercial wine handling processes it is known to transfer the wine from one container to another under the pressure of nitrogen gas admitted to the container. Reference to such a process is made in the textbook entitled, Technology of Wine Making, Second Edition, by Amerine, Berg, and Cruess. Additionally, there are available commercial devices for wine dispensing by bars which use high pressure nitrogen to drive the wine from a metal container to a dispensing tube at the bar. However, it does not appear that any satisfactory method or device is presently known which will allow safe dispensing of wine from a glass bottle, while preventing oxygen in the air from degrading the beverage both during dispensing and bottled storage between dispensing events.
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,750,915, issued to P. Kearny on Aug. 3, 1973, the problem of wine spoilage by air is addressed. Kearny disclosed a spout including a plug which prevents air from entering the bottle during storage periods. However, the spout is adapted to admit air during the pouring of the wine. This air will be trapped in the bottle during storage when it can chemically interact with the stored wine.
Recently, another device has been marketed in which wine is packaged not in a glass bottle, but in a plastic container having a dispensing spigot near the bottom. As the wine is dispensed from the spigot, atmospheric pressure collapses the plastic container in the region left empty by the poured wine. Since no air is admitted to the container at any time, no deterioration of the wine takes place during pouring or later storage. Although air is excluded by this method, it has been, and continues to be, the case that higher quality wines are bottled and corked in glass bottles, and are not made available in plastic dispensing containers.