The finest of red wines quickly loses its allure when it
splashes on a new blouse, tablecloth or carpet. But thanks to a high-school-age researcher participating in a special UC
Davis internship program, several red-wine stain removal
options of varying effectiveness have been assessed.


Natalie Ramirez, a junior at Center High School in Antelope,
participated last summer in the Collegiate Academic
Preparatory Science Research Achievement Program, an
internship program designed to enhance academic skills in
high school students and encourage their interest in the
agricultural, environmental and consumer sciences.


Ramirez spent the summer in Professor Andrew Waterhouse's
laboratory in the Department of Viticulture and Enology.
While there, she took on the challenge of determining the
best commercial products and home remedies for removing red-
wine stains from a variety of white fabrics.


"Although both scientific and popular literature existed
describing red-wine stain removal procedures, none seemed to
include relevant data on how effective those procedures
were," Ramirez says.


Her preliminary research yielded a variety of potential stain
removers ranging from table salt to white wine to commercial
soaps and stain removers. Ramirez then tested these on
cotton, cotton/polyester, nylon and silk fabric swatches with
red-wine stains. She tried these treatments on wine stains
that were just minutes old and those that had been allowed to
remain in the fabric for a day or longer, then used a special
piece of equipment to precisely measure any residual stains.


She discovered that white wine and salt just didn't work,
that some treatments were more effective with certain
fabrics, and that silk was the most resistant of the fabrics
to stain removal.


Overall, she reported that the best treatment was a solution
of 3 percent hydrogen peroxide mixed with an equal amount of
Dawn liquid soap.


Detailed information from Ramirez' study is available on the
Web at http://waterhouse.ucdavis.edu/rwstain/.


Media contacts:


-- Andrew Waterhouse, Viticulture and Enology, (530) 752-
4777, alwaterhouse@ucdavis.edu

-- Natalie Ramirez, home, (916) 721-9567 (You'll find her in
weekdays after 3:30 p.m.)


-- Patricia Bailey, News Service, (530) 752-9843,
pjbailey@ucdavis.edu>