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Product Review PRODUCT REVIEW www.kitchenwarenews.com n MAY 2014 n KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW 7 BY LORRIE BAUMANN The WineO wine stopper from KitchenHappy is an inexpensive way to add an extra note of thoughtfulness to a gift of wine. For about the price of a beautiful card, the WineO comes with a drawstring pouch to slip around the neck of the bottle. Inside the pouch, a simple wooden wine stopper engraved with a short message of fellowship, celebration or inspiration. When the wine itself is a memor y, the WineO and the thought remain. The WineO was designed for functionality. The no-taste, no-odor food grade thermoplastic Elastomer (TPE) shank eliminates the concerns of cork crumbs and the oxygen permeability of corks. The patented design and low profile topper allow horizontal or vertical placement of open bottles for storage flexibility. Presented along with the wine, it assures a host or hostess that genuine thought went into the gift, and of course, for the retailer, it 's an opportunity for a suggestive sale. The suggested retail price is $4.99. Opening wholesale WineO order includes twelve each of six designs, 72 gift pouches and a WineO counter display. Custom WineO are available with or without gift pouches starting with a minimum quantity of 400. Perfect for corporate gifts and souvenirs, custom WineO offers stylish appeal at a reasonable price. Sue Kinch, Chief Operating Officer, KitchenHappy said, " WineO struck a responsive chord during market research because it is an inexpensive tangible way to express appreciation for the real gift: time spent building deeper relationships." Kitchenware News & Housewares Review would echo that. WineO Wine Stopper Seals Friendships BY LORRIE BAUMANN New technology from ESPRO promises consumers a cup of coffee as good as they would get from ordering a Clover brew at Starbucks. The secret is a new French press that makes coffee without grit or bitterness, and holds its temperature even if the coffee is brewed before dinner to be enjoyed at the end of the meal, says Bruce Constantine, ESPRO President and Co-founder. ESPRO is new to the home housewares market, but the company that started out making tampers and steaming pitchers for the espresso trade is now in its tenth year. Its products are sold in 30 countries and are quietly doing their work in quality espresso bars around the world. A few years ago, Constantine and his business partner saw the Clover coffee maker at a Specialty Coffee Association of America trade show and wondered if they could make a machine for the home that functioned like the Clover, whose manufacturer was acquired by Starbucks in 2008, and is now making single-origin coffees in Starbucks shops around the world. The main obstacle was cost reduction: the Clover was a large automated machine that sold for around $14,000 – probably just a tad cost- prohibitive for your average coffee drinker. "We asked ourselves, 'What is Clover doing? Precise brewing of coffee, holding temperature during the brew, filtering it fully, and cutting the brewing off at the desired time. They were reinvigorating coffee and tea tasting in a way that hadn't been done for 40 years,'" Constantine says now. "We said, 'What if we could offer that experience at the table top?'" Some experimentation convinced them that among the coffee makers that were already available to consumers, the French press delivered the closest approximation to the Clover process, so they went to work to figure out how to adapt it to duplicate the results achievable with the Clover brewers. "Our brewer was not at all born out of tr ying to reinvent the French press. It was born out of tr ying to bring a device of the quality required to deliver this tasting style of coffee and tea at the tabletop - bringing Clover to the home," Constantine says. " What we ended up with was the ESPRO Press, designed by co-founder Christopher McLean, which you use exactly like a French press. Put all the coffee and all the water in the vessel, leave it for four minutes, press the filter down and pour it into the cup. There's nothing new to learn about how to use this device." Despite there being nothing new to learn using it, it does three very unique things compared to the common French press. First it eliminates the grit from the coffee with two micro-filters that work together to produce results that are almost identical to the grit-free coffee you get in the coffee shop. Then the micro- filters isolate the coffee under the filter from the grounds once the filter has been pressed down – so that the last cup from the brewer tastes like the first. Finally, an integrated double- wall stainless steel vacuum vessel keeps the coffee hot. "Now it makes sense to keep the coffee for hours because it's not getting bitter and more extracted over time," Constantine says. "As an aside, the double-wall vessel also keeps the brew temperature rock-steady. You've got a French press that works the way you would want a French press to work." "With any other method in the world of serving coffee or tea, it gets cold and continues extracting," he continues. "What's exciting for us is that not only is it a very different, cleaner cup of coffee, but it's able to do things that you've never been able to do with coffee or tea." Those things possible now that were never possible before include brewing the coffee during dinner preparations and then drinking it after the meal or offering guests a coffee tasting with a flight of coffees, perhaps paired with different desserts. The ESPRO coffee press is available in three different sizes: 8-ounce, 18-ounce and 32-ounce, with retail prices ranging from $79.95 to $119.95. The filters are BPA-, BPS- and phthalate-free and made in Canada from materials made in the USA. For more information, visit www.espro.ca. ESPRO Delivers Coffee Shop Quality at Home