One company aims to offer an affordable solution to extend the life of wine and prevent millions of partially consumed wine bottles get poured down the drain each year.
With support from Purdue University’s Research Foundation, ArT Wine Preservation has developed a canister containing argon gas that when sprayed into the opened wine bottle, pushes out the oxygen extending the bottle’s life.
Company founder Ryan Frederickson says he estimated how much wine is disposed of in the U.S. using research from the U.K.
“We estimate about $1.5 billion of wine gets dumped down the drain every year,” he says. “And after kinda doing that market research, I was always watching the numbers on the food waste we have every year, and I said, ‘Alright, this is some place where we can make some impact on the food waste problem.’”
Frederickson says one of his company’s goals is to make it affordable to consumers.
“We wanted to make sure we had something that was very affordable, something people could use on their $10–$15 bottles of wine as well as their $50 bottles,” he says.
Frederickson says sales have doubled over the past year and he is optimistic for continued growth.
Contact Samantha at shorton@wfyi.org or follow her on Twitter at @SamHorton5.
