Wine stains suck, especially when it’s red wine on your brand new white shirt. There are lots of ways to banish such stains, but think about pouring yourself some milk next time it happens to you.
I found this tip, courtesy of Christophe Jasmin, owner and manager of Thazard, while reading about some other great wine stain removal tips at Wine Folly. Here’s what Jasmin recommends:
...I start by bringing some milk to a boil (enough to cover the stain), remove it from the stove before it actually boils, soak the stained part of the material in there for approximately 30 minutes, then rinse it with cold water, and finally throw it in the washing machine with the rest of my clothes. Any cycle (yes, even delicate) will do. Works every time for me.
Okay, but how does it work? How does milk make the red go away? No, you’re not staining over the red with white. It actually has to with what’s in the milk. The stuff in wine that gives it its color, or the phenolic compounds, don’t like to hang out in water or other materials as much as they like to party in an organic, fatty phase—like you’d find in milk. So the coloring actually gets absorbed into the fat of the milk itself, leaving your clothing stain-free. And the more fat content the better, so use whole milk if you have it.
The best part about this trick, according to Jasmin, is that you can just keep on drinking when the spill happens. The heat and fat content of the milk should do its thing whenever you get to it. So you don’t have to smash the big red “Wine Spill Emergency” button, rip off your clothes, and spend half the party quoting Lady Macbeth in the bathroom.
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