At a recent My Wine Tribe tasting, one of our guests got a bit tipsy and spilled his red wine on my beige seat cushion. Luckily, I had a miracle product on hand for just such emergencies. Called Vino 911, it made all kinds of fab claims on its package and I bought it at a wine store, so I was confident it would do be THE answer for red wine stain removal. Boy, was I wrong. It really didn’t do much at all, so I just turned over the cushion and let the party roll.
But the incident kept bugging me. As a frequent hostess and occasional spiller of red wine, I need a solution. Relying on the wisdom of the crowd, I queried the crew on My Wine Tribe’s Facebook page (yes please, do follow me). And, of course, I got a lot of great suggestions. So today I poured loads of perfectly good red wine onto the remaining beige seat cushions for a little experiment.
The Contenders 
From Tomoko: “Soak in water to remove as much as possible, then put baking soda on the stain and let sit. Then put vinegar or lemon juice and rinse with warm water. It works most of the time.” “Most of the time” is not exactly a ringing endorsement, Tomoko, which makes sense because this is a tricky method with inconsistent results. Where I hit the stain with a good dousing of lemon juice it worked perfectly, but you can easily see where I missed.
From Fran: “I pour boiling water over stains in tablecloths or clothes and have luck getting stains out.” Fran, you should go to Vegas because you have more luck than I do.
From Dana: “Sol u Mel by Melaluca. It took red wines out of a white rug” I am intrigued, but I couldn’t find this product at the two stores I tried. Anyone know how I can get my hands on some?
From Debbie: “I swear by Wine Away. It removed wine from a white wool sweater.” Debbie, you should join Fran in Vegas because you are luckier than I. While this was better than most products I tried, it still didn’t get all of the stains out.
From my laundry room: I had Shout stain remover and a Tide pen sitting around, so I threw both into the test. The Tide pen was definitely better than the Shout, but it required some work and, like the water, baking soda and lemon combo, you have to be precise.
From old advice stuck in my head: Everyone knows salt is supposed to remove stains, right? Well, dislodge this from your brain. It didn’t work either and in fact was the worst of all options.
And finally, from Suzanne: “OxiClean!!” Well Suzanne, I agree. OxiClean certainly deserves two exclamation points. This stuff WORKS! All you have to do is mix it with a little water, pour over the stain, wait one to five minutes and blot out. Relatively easy and AWESOME!
Thanks for all of the recos, everyone, and a big round of applause to OxiClean. You rock!