Special Magic Kitchen

I recently purchased the Hinckley Cellars wine label remover (’The Note’) and overall I am pretty satisfied. There is a YouTube video that shows you how it works on their website if you are interested in buying one, but essentially it uses a process of soaking the label along with a sharp-edged scrapper to take the label off.

Before buying this product, however, I researched other methods for removing labels such as the adhesive removers, but I didn’t want to be bound to using tape and having to replenish adhesive strips. In the end I chose ‘The Note’ instead.

Regardless, here are my initial impressions of the product.

• It does a good job taking off labels, but you need to practice a little bit.
• Even though the blade comes with a leather protector, the edge is not that sharp and in fact it seemed to be too dull to effectively scrape off the label. My solution was to use a knife honer to improve the edge and it was then easier to get the scraping started evenly.
• The longer you soak the label under the faucet the more delicate the label becomes and it is more likely that you will end up ripping the label. What I found was that by filling the bottle up with really hot water and letting it sit for 15 minutes, I was able to get the adhesive to loosen without over soaking the label. Sometimes I wouldn’t even need to run the label under water at all, but usually a short soaking helped.
• After taking about ten labels off, I was pretty good at it. But with that said, some labels are just plain tough and will be challenging regardless. Not every label will make it, but practice first on labels you care less about.

All in all I would recommend this product, but I would try sharpening the edge to make the scrapping more effective and you may also want to try the hot-water technique too. Also, when I bought mine, they had a restaurant edition for $39 and a scratched/discontinued product for $29, so I would consider buying those if it is not a gift. Otherwise it will cost you $49 with the gift box.