In the test script, simply changing 

def emit(f, data=snips):
    for datum in data:
        f.write(datum)

to 

def gemit(f, data=snips):
    datas = ''.join(data)
    f.write(datas)

improves direct gzip performance from
[1.1799781322479248, 0.50524115562438965, 0.2713780403137207]
[1.183434009552002, 0.50997591018676758, 0.26801109313964844]
[1.173914909362793, 0.51325297355651855, 0.26233196258544922]

to

[0.43065404891967773, 0.50007486343383789, 0.26698708534240723]
[0.43662095069885254, 0.49983596801757812, 0.2686460018157959]
[0.43778109550476074, 0.50057196617126465, 0.2687230110168457]

which means that you're better off letting the application handle buffering issues. Furthermore, the problem with gzip-level buffering is the choice of the default buffer size.

Time to close ?