The Wine Mummy

LEFT: The Wine Mummy is an easy-to-pack  sarcophogus for your syrah, sauvignon blanc, or Scotch.

Not so long ago, bringing a souvenir bottle of wine or liquor home from a trip was easy: You'd just stuff it into your carry-on bag and keep the bag away from steamrollers or rugby players on the way home. Nowadays, with airport security personnel equating anything liquid with nitroglycerine, your bottle of Mouton-Rothschild or Richard's Wild Irish Rose will be confiscated at the X-ray machine unless you've packed it in your checked baggage.

Until recently, your choices when impulse-packing a single bottle of beverage were fairly limited: You could wrap each bottle in dirty underwear, shove it into a plastic bag, and hope that a twist tie would prevent the liquid from staining your clothes if the bottle broke; or you could lug a special container of rigid plastic foam on your trip in case you bought some wine or spirits. Now, thanks to Vino Amici, there's a practical--and inexpensive--compromise solution: The Wine Mummy, a reusable pouch that folds flat until you need it and protects your bottle when you're ready to fly.

The Wine Mummy is a 7 x 17-inch (roughly 18 x 43 cm) bag of heavy plastic with a bubble-pack lining. It holds a wine or liquor bottle of up to 750 ml. After you've slipped the bottle into the bag, you close the plastic zipper top and pack The Wine Mummy in your suitcase. The bubbles protect the contents against the hard knocks of airport baggage handling, and the zipper top is designed to retain spilled liquid in the unlikely event that a baggage conveyor crushes your suitcase.

In the U.S., The Wine Mummy has a suggested price of $4.95, or a bit less if you purchase a pack of two, three, or five. If your local wine merchant doesn't carry The Wine Mummy, you can order it online from many catalog retailers or directly from the manufacturer. For more information, visit www.winemummy.com.

Photo copyright © Vino Amici.

 

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