The short answer:
Use equal parts hydrogen peroxide and Dawn liquid soap as soon as possible after the spill.
UPDATE: El Jefe from El Bloggo Torcido adds in the comments that Wine Away has worked for him and his wife, and that they like it so much they offer it in their tasting room. Wine Away is made from “fruit and vegetable extracts” which sounds mysterious, but apparently it works great.
The longer answer:
In 2002 Dr. Andrew Waterhouse and a high school student intern at UC Davis performed a series of tests to determine what solutions were the best at getting red wine out of a series of fabrics. The fabrics tested were: silk, cotton, a polyester-cotton blend, and nylon. They applied the solutions at two different intervals. The first was two minutes after the spill and the second a whopping 24 hours after. The fabrics were treated and then left to stand for three hours. After that they were washed in cold water and dried.
The bottom line of the research was what you probably already know if you’ve ever spilled red wine: most of the cleaner solutions are pretty horrible at getting out the stain. In fact they were just about as effective as simply chucking the garment in the wash with regular old detergent and praying.
One cleaner did stand out though. The best cleaner they found was an even mixture of peroxide, which bleaches the dyes in red wine, and some Dawn liquid soap. The runner up was a stain remover called Erado-sol, which was almost as effective on the cotton based materials, and was the most effective in cleaning the silk.
Wives tales about using white whine to treat red wine stains were a dead end in everything but nylon. On everything else white wine was about as good as regular old laundering, and in some cases it actually made the stain worse. The same with true with salt, so go ahead and save your sodium chloride for the dinner table.
Instead, pull out that old jar of peroxide and some Dawn and scrub out those pesky red wine stains for good.
El Jefe
3 years ago
hi – there is a product called “Wine Away” that I have had great success with. I believe it is available thru Wine Enthusiast and many wine retailers.
It works very well with the caveat that you must hit the stain immediately and soak it pretty well. You don’t scrub. When it dries the stain is gone and any fabric I have used it on is unaffected.
This product has saved my wife’s beautiful white wool sweater, and my green felt topped poker table (full glasses of red wine spilled – twice!). The stains are just gone. It has also been a godsend in our tasting rooms as a remedy for over-enthusatic swirling (and therefore sometimes a catalyst for spontaneous wet t-shirt contests, but I digress.)
I expect the Dawn and peroxide will work great, but take care on the proportions or the peroxide may bleach the original color.
Disclaimer: No financial interest in this product, but I do sell it because I like it. It’s not a terribly huge profit center for us…:)
cheers! – j
Josh
3 years ago
Whats up El Jefe!
Big fan of your blog. I’ll add Wine Away to the post. Thanks for the heads up.
BTW, when we build it, what say you come over and consult on the whole wet tee shirt contest thing. I think it will really help with the foot traffic.
Pinotblogger: the Capozzi Winery blog » Twisted
3 years ago
[...] * I say apparently because El Jefe doesn’t mention my earlier article in his post. He writes that he came up with the idea when he was reading a Ham Radio magazine. I know he reads this blog, so I assumed that he was at least inspired a little by the post. And even if Jefe did happen to come up with the idea on his own, it still would have been cool if he’d acknowledged that another wine blogger out there had a very similar idea. C’mon ‘mano. Chale! [...]
wine spill on silk
3 years ago
I just left my silk shirt soaking overnight with some H2O2 and it seems to have gotten rid of the stain, a stain that is a few days old and had been trhough a previous washing.
Gloria Sanders
1 year ago
Hello!
I would like to use the image of the spilled wine glass at the top of the article ‘How to get red wine out’ posted on 9th august 2006 – is there a copyright on the image and is it possible to dowload the original photo at a higher resolution for reprint on theatre posters and postcards?
It’s quite urgent so if you could get back to me asap it would be much appreciated, email g_m_sanders@hotmail.com.
Many thanks,
Gloria Sanders
(London)