You've seen the infomercials: some yuppie stiff hockin' the "greatest stain remover ever made." He throws everything from dirty clothes to greasy carburetors to dead cats into a clear bowl, adds a tablespoon of miracle mix and presto, the water parts like the Red Sea, everything's clean and the cat coughs up the hairball that killed it. You'd swear this guy was David Copperfield if it weren't for the fact that it actually looked real.

Now, not that I'm a skeptic or anything, but that's how I approached Wine Away. It claims to remove most red wine stains from carpets and fabric. Uh huh. Having done my fair share of spilling red wine on and/or over just about every surface possible - and knowing that nothing gets a red wine stain out completely - I figured it'd live up to my already tried and true stain-removing remedies and just be another "almost." Well my friends, this stuff truly is a miracle. Okay, maybe that's an overstatement, but this shit really works! I used it on everything -- clothing, carpets, my cat -- and the stain was history, Casper, gone, outta there. It even removed red wine stains from our carpet that were made three years ago when a quake rattled a few bottles off of our tasting racks. (Looks like we'll be getting our deposit back after all!)

Yes, this stuff really works. It smells like lemons, so there's no nasty odor. And it's made from fruit and vegetable extracts so there's no concerns about dangerous or hazardous chemicals around the kiddies. And since they're the reason we drink so much red wine in the first place, that's a good thing! So is the price: 12 ounce bottle is only $8.50; a 2 ounce bottle will set you back about $5.25.

The only drawback to Wine Away is it won't remove bad reds wines from our cellar. Oh well. Back to the infomercials.