Recovering From a Spill

In our home love is both blind and clumsy. Recently my fiance, Paul, spilled an entire glass of red wine on our new beige slipcovered sofa. I tried fizzy water. I tried Morton's. I tried prayer. The result was a salty couch cushion that looked as though it had been the scene of a serious wounding.

Deflated, I went to bed and the stain set.

In the morning I had two choices: Chuck the sofa or get rid of Paul. But I just booked the string trio for the wedding and it took so long to find the right dress, you know? The fiance was not negotiable.

So I turned to the Internet, where I sought answers from the guru of good thinking: my friend Google. In the search field, I typed "remove red wine stain."

At www.stratsplace.com, an online bulletin board for wine enthusiasts, I found the alleged miracle home remedy of "Patty S.": Mix nearly equal parts of Dawn, Woolite or any other liquid soap with household-strength hydrogen peroxide. Patty said to use whatever soap is specific to your problem -- rug shampoo for carpets, Woolite for sweaters -- and go a little heavier on the peroxide, the handy household cleaning staple called on to fix everything from cuts and scrapes to leftover salad and house plants.

Patty credited the special concoction to friend "Nancy O," who clued her in after sloshing a glass of red down the front of her own mustard-colored turtleneck. Spray or dab on her remedy, she said, promising, "You'll actually see the red wine disappear as you drizzle the mixture on a stain!"

Hadn't I thrown away oodles of sweater sets and fretted over forever-blotched carpets thanks to the all-mighty stainmaker that is red wine? Truth is, I figured the slipcover was pretty much a loss, so even if Patty's solution bleached out the fabric, the result would be better than what I had.

Patty's recipe hit Art Stratemeyer's Web site about wine, gardening and the arts four years ago. Since then, he said, he's received "tens and tens of thousands" of responses from people praising Patty S. for saving their clothes, their table linens and their sanity.

So I dug out the Q-tips and excavated the bottle of peroxide from under the bathroom sink. I mixed. I applied. And then I nearly lost consciousness. It worked!

The slipcover, even the poly-filled cushion underneath, was rendered spotless. No soapy residue, no bleached-out material in need of a second miracle. It completely got rid of the Tony Soprano-someone-got-whacked-here stain.

So who is this Patty S. and why isn't she selling her miracle on the infomercial circuit? Attempts to reach her through an old e-mail address failed.

But Andrew L. Waterhouse, professor of enology (that, I now know, is the study of wine and winemaking) at the University of California at Davis, oversaw a 2001 study -- conducted by a high school student -- on red wine stain removal. Using fabrics as varied as cotton and silk, the researcher applied a variety of home and commercial stain remover remedies found in books, housekeeping guides and the Internet.

The best treatment overall, the study found, was Patty's mixture of peroxide and Dawn. Note that the report suggested the remedy could potentially bleach some colored fabrics, although no bleaching occurred during the tests.

Worst bet? White wine and salt -- common remedies -- were not effective, and left very visible stains in their wake.

So today I'm a disciple of Patty. And Paul, bless him, has gone back to beer.