Gallicchio's decanters make wine more flavorful

Decanters made by a new Grass Valley manufacturer allow a bottle of wine to breathe as it is poured, improving the flavor.

With nearly three decades blowing glass, Victor Gallicchio, 58, founded Gallicchio Glass on Litton Drive a year ago. Since then, he has been making the unusual-looking decanting devices plus apparatus for the winemaking industry, he said Tuesday.

Decanting puts the liquid in contact with oxygen, which releases the wine’s aroma — as important as the flavor in the enjoyment of wine, said Julie Holmes, general manager of the Indian Springs tasting room in downtown Nevada City.

“It’s a very clever way to decant the wine,” Holmes added. “People like it that he’s local.”

The decanters — a glass tube with a spherical chamber on one end and another glass extension that fits into the neck of a standard wine bottle — are available at the Wooden Spoon in Grass Valley and at wineries Montevino in Penn Valley; Burch Hall in Grass Valley; and Nevada City Winery in Nevada City.

The device retails for about $36.

In 1972 when he left military service, Gallicchio got a night job cleaning at a tourist mall on Waikiki Beach. He learned a few basics from a glassblower of gift items there, then continued to teach himself, he recalled.

In the 1980s, he got into commercial and scientific glass blowing, eventually with Farlow’s Scientific Glassblowing Inc. in Grass Valley.

With his own firm, he became interested in applications for the wine industry. At the fundraiser Wild Women on Wine, he saw the need for a better decanting system.

“I work with quite a few of the winemakers in town for knowledge and a taste test,” Gallicchio said.

See more about the decanters at www.gallicchioglass.com.

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To contact City Editor Trina Kleist, e-mail tkleist@theunion.com or call 477-4230.