Gary’s Blog

Eravino Whiskey Decanter Globe Gift Set

$30-$70 (depending upon sales!)
Sold on Amazon (or other sites, availability may vary but try Groupon as well)

We would like to thank Benjamin Hopper and Eravino for sending us a sample to review.

What the Producer Says

The unique design is skillfully hand-blown with a ship inside. As you empty the decanter the ship emerges from the wine or liquor, creating a phenomenal effect. Our product is made to complement the rest of your modern tableware, like glasses, bowls, and plates. Features a hand-crafted wooden stand with 4-bar glass bases that acts as a coasters to prevent water marks. Beautifully carved with an elegant and natural shape that compliments your home decors.

HIGH QUALITY: 100% handmade and high quality 100% Lead Free Crystal Glass that provides a brilliant, colorless finish that allows for the true color of wine to be fully appreciated. Crafted out of fine crystal for timeless shine and durability.

FOR ALL OCCASIONS: An excellent conversation piece for any occasion. It is capable of holding just the right amount of your favorite wine for a small get together with friends. Each one is handmade from the finest, completely lead-free glass. One set features 1 large Globe Whisky Decanter with a capacity to hold up to 850ml of liquid and 4 elegant glasses.

AUTHENTIC HAND- BLOWN GLASS: Made of lead-free crystal crafted by skilled artisans with an expert hand and an eye for quality. You literally taste the history and feel precision workmanship in the palm of your hands. The unique design is skillfully hand-blown with a ship inside. As you empty the decanter the ship emerges from the wine or liquor, creating a phenomenal effect.

PRESERVE FRESHNESS: Features a fitted glass stopper that seals the decanter, ideal in keeping the freshness of your favorite beverage while in storage to stay on its aromatic and flavorful state.

THE PERFECT GIFT: For those who have everything, you need a gift they don’t have. This is probably it. Offer them this stunning wine accessory and put a wide smile on their face! Perfect gift for wine enthusiasts, lovers and collectors, whether it’s for Anniversary, Birthday, Mother’s day, Christmas, or any other holiday. That is truly timeless provide an understated simplicity on the table.

What Gary Says

Decanter sets like this are about decoration primarily. Obviously if you don’t like ships, you likely wouldn’t want this particular set. When asked if I would be interested in reviewing a decanter set, I made it clear that my focus would be on the function (as well as overall impressions). I shared that I’ve seen some decanters that are lovely to look at, and a complete pain in the ass to actually pour whisk(e)y from – and I’d hate to find that was the case.

The decanter itself is pretty lightweight – coming in just over 7 ounces. A standard 750 mL bottle (like Rittenhouse Rye Bottled in Bond for example) is double that at 14 ounces, and a hefty decanter-style bottle like the recently discontinued Wild Turkey Kentucky Spirit bottle comes in at 26 ounces. My point is that 7 ounces is pretty darn light, which has its pros and cons. In the pros column, that it makes it easier to handle when full of whisk(e)y. In the cons columns, it likely wouldn’t survive being dropped. To be fair – I expect the same is true of most display pieces like this, so I don’t really consider that to be a negative.

When setup, the entire set takes up about 8.5 inches cubed (one side is slightly shorter than that, like 8.25 inches). That’s fairly compact, which I’d consider a plus. It lists the capacity as 850 mL, and I wanted to see how it took that.  I cracked open a brand new Early Times Bottled in Bond, which comes in a 1 liter bottle, and measured out just over 800 mL.  Below is an image showing the decanter ‘not quite full’.

You can see where the liquid is starting up the neck – and more importantly – you can’t really see the ship when it is full!  I poured about half back into the bottle, and you can see how the ship ’emerges’ from the depths below.

If this will be ‘more display than pouring’, I’d recommend filling it more like 250-350 mL (about what is shown in their marketing images) to showcase the ship – although as a lot of volume will then be exposed to air, the flavor may alter in time.

The decanter itself is wide enough that I can’t grab it with one hand with confidence (don’t quite get half-way around it).  I mean – I could grab it, but I wouldn’t want to have it slip out of my hands.  I found it was better to lift it from the neck – although when in the stand, there wasn’t quite enough room to get a finger completely around the neck.

Not a big deal – just used the stopper to tilt it up a bit to get a handle on the neck. Once held, the stem at the base of the decanter fit nicely between two fingers, and I didn’t have any issues pouring – although it pours better when less full. Speaking of pouring – as with any bottle (not just decanters) you have to be careful of your pouring angle.  To illustrate (note I’m not wasting whisk(e)y here!) I tilted it up too much, and the gurgling along with the flared lip just makes a mess.

While the flared lip makes the result a bit more messy, this is just physics and you get a similar mess with almost any bottle.  You have to start slowly and ensure you’re allowing air to pass through the neck to displace the liquid.  Below illustrates that this pours perfectly fine when you do it properly.

All in all, it is a perfectly serviceable decanter, and does what it is supposed to do.  My wife has forgotten more about glass than I’ll ever learn, and she thought it was fairly well done in terms of the execution of the blown-glass decanter.  My main concern would be that if I wanted to have it showcase the ship while on display, I’d need to keep it less than half-full.  If I’m pouring from it regularly (and just replacing that small amount), no big deal.  But if I have it more for display, over time the whisk(e) may deteriorate.  That said, you may want to have it full while on display in order to showcase the ship emerging at a get together where you’re pouring for friends and family.

If you’re looking for just the decanter and stand, and don’t care for the additional glassware, they are sold by themselves for $40.

While I drink my fair share of whisk(e)y, I’ve only ever had a couple of decanters – so if you are a decanter connoisseur and have questions I didn’t answer or think about, please email me and let me know!  Be happy to amend this review (provided I still have the decanter).

Cheers!

Gary

From time to time, the TTB (or Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau within the Department of the Treasury) proposes rule changes, and they’ll post these on-line and allow a period of public comment.  I’ll be the first to admit that searching out proposed changes to government regulation isn’t what I enjoy doing with my spare time.  Thankfully the fine folks at WhiskeyCast did a great summary on a recent proposed change that did catch my attention – which is the proposed change to eliminate all but the minimum and maximum standards for containers sizes for distilled spirits.

When I first discovered Scotch and gained an appreciation for this concept of ‘independent bottlers’, I was immediately energized by the possibilities.  These small companies (ok, some not so small) can purchase barrels of whisky, do what they want with it (including unique finishes, etc), and bottle it – sometimes mentioning the source distillery, sometimes having to imply the source.  As a consumer, it opens up a huge world of different options.  If your’e unfamiliar with this concept, let me give you an example:

Let’s say your favorite single malt is Laphroaig.  You’ve tried most of their lineup and have enjoyed most of what you’ve tried.  In the US, you’re limited to a handful of options (10 yr, 10 yr Cask Strength, 18 yr, Lore, Select, Quarter Cask, Cairdeas and a few others).  Now picture this . . . someone asks if you’ve ever wanted to try Laphroaig with a sherry cask finish?  Or maybe a port cask finish?  Oh – and picture that it will be non-chill filtered, natural color, and at cask strength?  All of these are possibilities thanks to independent bottlers, who can take a chance on a single cask with doing something unique/different.  Don’t get me wrong – these are exceptions (there are plenty of independent bottlings that are along the lines of “Laphroaig 13 yr, 46%, NCF” – although you might get that for barely more than the 10yr (as the independent bottlers don’t have the same marketing overhead, etc).

My excitement over this ‘discovery’ (as in, discover for me; this is hardly new and has been a practice in the UK for generations) was almost as quickly squashed when I learned how few of those ever make it to the United States due to our regulations regarding “standards of fill”.

Today in the United States, distilled spirits can only be packaged in specific size containers (50 mL, 100 mL, 200 mL, 375 mL, 750mL, 1 liter, and 1.75 liters).  I wasn’t aware of other container sizes until touring Jim Beam many years ago and seeing the ‘quality control’ stock area which included 4.5 liter bottles (the tour guide explained that some export markets allowed larger and different sized bottles).  After trying some single malt Scotch that was independently bottled and sold overseas, I was disappointed that I may never have the opportunity to try some of these gems.  Why?  The similar standards for the European market (and really for most if not all of the rest of the world) are different – where the ‘standard’ bottle there is 700 ml vs our 750 ml.

Why don’t they just bottle in 750 ml?  I mean – they can, and some certainly do.  But it is a production burden to have one size for one market.  If you’re moving products through the rest of the world, why go through the trouble of buying bottles and making new labels for one market like the United States?  (the answer for some is that we’re a fairly large market, and have a lot more disposable income than others)

I did write my Congressman when I learned of this injustice, and got the prompt “Thank you for your letter, your concerns are really important to me . . . ” form response letter, and just wrote this off as one of those disappointing realities.  While the lifting of such restrictions would potentially be great for me as a whisk(e)y geek, I get it that these were offering some ‘protection’ to domestic producers (although it isn’t like anyone in the US can make Scotch, or anyone in Scotch can make Bourbon . . . so I never fully bought that argument – at least when it came to whisk(e)y).

“So this is awesome news, right?  No downside, right?”

Well . . . not exactly.  There is absolutely a risk that domestic producers like Jim Beam, Buffalo Trace, Wild Turkey, etc will decide “Good – let’s scrap these 750 mL bottles and just do everything as 700 mL without changing the prices from the 750 mL!”  Let’s face it – they’re selling their products overseas, and having to have different setups for the bottle sizes, so this creates an opportunity for efficiency – and I ABSOLUTELY expect that they’ll change to 700 mL.  What I don’t know is whether they will give American consumers the benefit of being good at math (in their defense, there’s a lot of evidence that we’re not so great at math collectively, or rather that we don’t apply it when purchasing whisk(e)y) and reduce their prices by the 9% of whisk(e)y they’d be shorting us if they bottle at 700 mL but still sell at the 750 mL price.

Let me be clear – this is NOT just up to the producers.  There are distributors and resellers (because of some OTHER goofy regulations requiring this three-tiered system we have – another soapbox for another day) in the mix.  A reseller may decide to just pocket any cost savings and not reprice a damn thing.  Prices have been going up pretty much across the board when it comes to bourbon and rye; some more than others.

My thoughts?  I’d prefer to have the opportunity to buy a wider variety of spirits that this change would enable.  If local producers take advantage, maybe I’ll buy more Scotch and bourbon.  At the end of the day, competition will address that – or it won’t.  But as a lover of variety, I’m in favor of the change.

What are your thoughts?  Feel free to share them in the comments.  Oh – and if you are so inclined, you can submit a comment to the TTB until August 30th (here’s the link with the proposed change, and option to comment).

Cheers!
Gary