The Horror!

Spilling red wine on your (or God forbid, a dear friend’s) beige carpet, white couch, tan trousers or ecru silk blouse creates a special kind of freak out. I have this on my mind because I’m attending an event in April and wearing a beloved ivory satin dress, and I’m worried someone will dump a glass of red wine down my back. This may seem paranoid, but I had someone spill half a glass of wine (thankfully white) down my décolletage at a winery opening not three months ago.

For today’s posting, I would like to discuss how to get red wine stains out of fabric and carpet. I hope that anyone who has their own formula for red wine removal will post it here for general benefit.

Fail safe: Wine Away is perhaps the most necessary tool in a wine enthusiast’s toolbox, other than a good corkscrew and decent glassware. I once dropped a bottle of wine, which smashed next to my foot, and entirely soaked the leg of my tan trousers with Syrah. I sprayed Wine Away on it, and the wine and any stain disappeared. It’s really quite a remarkable product. I plan to keep a small bottle in my clutch during the said ivory dress event.

An old wives tale, which actually seems to work, is to combat red wine with white. It does seem to be true that white wine stops red wine stains from setting. So, if you spill red wine, the trick is to blot (don’t rub) as much red wine as possible off the fabric, then soak the area with white wine—if you happen to have an open bottle available. Club soda seems to work the same way as white wine. Once you have removed as much of the red wine as possible, in many cases pouring club soda on the stain will keep it from setting into the fibers. Then you can saturate the area with Woolite or another gentle cleaner to get the rest of the stain out.

I haven’t tested this myself, but I hear that pouring table salt on red wine soaks up the wine and stops the stain from forming. Apparently if you soak up the excess red wine, dump salt on the stain and leave it overnight, then vacuum off in the morning (this must work best for carpet), the stain will be gone.

I’ve had some success with hydrogen peroxide as well—which also works well on blood stains, incidentally. If the stain hasn’t set, saturating the area with hydrogen peroxide is a good bet.

I suggest stocking up on Wine Away, Woolite, club soda and cheap white wine if one is planning to throw a party. And if you have a propensity to trip, stumble or gesticulate with wine glasses (much like myself)—keep a small bottle of Wine Away in your purse (or man bag).