Every time you move wine, you're introducing risk.
Oxidation doesn't announce itself. Here's how to stop it before it starts.Racking, transferring, topping up barrels — these are routine parts of winemaking. They're also the moments when your wine is most vulnerable.
Every time wine moves from one vessel to another, it comes into contact with oxygen. Most of the time nothing dramatic happens. But oxygen exposure is cumulative. Each transfer adds a little more, and over time that adds up to dulled fruit, loss of freshness, and in worse cases the kind of aldehyde-driven, sherry-like flaws that are hard to come back from. The wine you've been patiently aging deserves better than that.
The fix is straightforward. Two things protect your wine at transfer: moving it gently with the right pump, and displacing the oxygen in the receiving vessel before the wine ever gets there.
Gentle movement: The right pump makes a difference
Our Self-Priming Shurflo Diaphragm Pump is the most popular wine transfer pump we carry for good reason. The three-chamber diaphragm design moves wine gently without the turbulence that accelerates oxygen uptake. It's self-priming so it can draw straight out of a tank, pumps three gallons per minute, and everything that touches your wine is food-grade polypropylene and Santoprene — no metal contact, no off flavors.
Self-Priming Shurflo Diaphragm Pump
Gentle, turbulence-free transfers to protect your wine from oxygen uptake.
Note on sediment: The pump's diaphragms are sensitive to solids. If there's any chance of sediment in your line, we highly recommend running it through an inline pre-filter first. The redesigned H308C pre-filter is easy to attach without tools and fully disassembles for cleaning.
View Pre-Filter (H308C)Displacing oxygen: Push with gas, not gravity
The MoreFlavor Gas Transfer Tool handles the other half of the equation. It uses inert gas to push wine out of a barrel rather than letting gravity and atmosphere do the work. It forms an airtight seal with a compression silicone bung, keeping oxygen out of the equation from start to finish. Bonus: Since you already have an inert gas cylinder hooked up to run this tool, you can easily use it to flush the oxygen out of your receiving vessel before you start moving the wine.
We designed it ourselves after trying most of what's on the market — polished stainless finish, quality welds, adjustable lees pin. It's the tool we wanted to exist, so we made it.
MoreFlavor Gas Transfer Tool
Form an airtight seal and push wine with inert gas rather than atmospheric pressure.
Whether you are pumping from a tank or pushing with gas from a barrel, having both of these tools in your cellar takes the vast majority of oxidation risk out of transfer day.
Deep Dive: Oxygen & Fermentation
If you want to go deeper on how oxygen interacts with wine during fermentation — when it's harmful, when it's actually useful, and how to actively manage it — we wrote a full guide covering everything you need to know.
Download PDF Guide