What do you do with wine you don't like?

I have amassed a decent number of individual bottles in my collection that I don’t care for. These individual bottles typically cost in the $30 range and come from random purchases of wines I’m not familiar with on sites like LastBottle or WTSO, where I will buy 2-3 bottles when ordering, either to get free shipping or simply because I don’t like buying only one of something that I can’t find locally. I live in a city in a smaller 1BR apartment, so neither we nor our friends really ever host dinner parties, its more of a meet at the restaurant type of city. I don’t have much room for wine storage (limited to a small wine fridge that holds 20 bottles). I find myself not wanting to just dump these bottles, but I also want to save some room and drink what I enjoy. I try to limit my wine consumption to 2 bottles a week, so it’s exhausting thinking of how long it will take me to get through these all, especially considering I don’t care for them. What do you guys do when you have wines you know you don’t want to drink, and there is no market to sell them?

Cook with it or chuck it down the drain. Life is too short to drink bad wine

Gift them.

In my experience (which is unfortunately quite lengthy) you will never drink these. If you cannot find someone to give them to who does like those types of wine, I vote for the second post. And, if you don’t cook with wine much, option 2 is the correct answer.

Too bad antiquated laws make it illegal to give wine to thrift stores.
When I find that I don’t care for a wine that is generally accepted as good wine, I open it at neighborhood parties and company events. Some I’m able to give away if I know a specific recipient will like it. Drinking wine you do not enjoy is a bad choice.

Christmas gifts. Most non serious wine people will be thrilled to get the wine.

Sell it?

Just stand outside, and pass them out to customers as they leave.

Perfect pairing for Chinese dinner and a movie, on that night.

All good answers. I would only add that in some cases wines you do not like today may surprise you with some bottle age.

Agreed.

The OP’s limited storage and limited consumption would make it quite difficult. I have plenty of storage and use a combination of the above: Christmas gifts, donation to charity events, open at parties, etc. If the type of wine fits I’ll use them for sangria in the summer. However, if the wines are decent but just not my speed, i.e. something I’ve bought to try rather than a gift from someone who doesn’t know wine, I have on occasion just waited a few years to try them again. Sometimes they still end up for cooking or poured down the drain, but there have been some pleasant surprises.

Pass it forward.

Sell a mixed case on commerce corner for a discount.

Serve them to non-wine geek guests. A lot of them will think they like the wines, only because I served the wines.

This is what my fiancee recommended, but honestly it wouldn’t be worth the effort to sell them, as I don’t think there is a big market for random bottles from random smaller producers. I’m also pretty sure shipping a case of wine is prohibitively expensive to the point where the return on effort would be very minimal.

Unfortunately the limited storage thing makes it tough otherwise I’d love to do this. With respect to pouring them at parties, etc… we’re in our early 30s and we live in a city so we very rarely do things at people’s houses, and most of our friends aren’t big wine people (typically people drink beer or Truly at these gatherings). My fiancee doesn’t drink at all, so I typically drink wine alone. In the rare instances when we do have people over that enjoy wine I like to open really good bottles as its my only opportunity to geek out on wine. Drinking a $150 bottle solo isn’t very enjoyable.

Frankly, I enjoy sitting alone and enjoying a great bottle on occasion. It is nice to have the opportunity to sit with a glass and contemplate a good wine while winding down some nights.

Mike, the idea of gifting them is a good one, most people will probably find what you’ve bought to be an upgrade from their supermarket wines. Otherwise, just chalk it up to the cost of going down the long and winding path of learning about wine, and what you like. The biggest lesson is probably to avoid buying wines just because you read a nice write-up, and they are being sold at what looks like a bargain price. If you’ve got a couple dozen $30 wines you don’t care for all that much, that’s actually a pretty cheap wine geek life lesson in the scheme of things

The guy who tunes up my heating system in October. Yes, here’s that Nero D’Avola I ain’t liking these days.

My haircutter Giuseppe that loves jug wine, here you go-Joe, try this Barbaresco that’s not spinning my fagiole anymore.

The guy that tunes up my A/C in April, have this Pinot Noir I have fallen out of love with but once really did like a lot.

Plumber snaking through my tree roots in front yard huh. Have this with that cash payment.

So many places, so much wine to get rid of. Lolol

Whatever you do DO NOT bring to someone’s home for dinner unless you wouldn’t drink it yourself.

Most importantly, it’s easy for us to come off quasi-elitist with fine wine. Do work at not being a schmuck…lololol

Just give it away as a free gift. (Not a gift for a special occasion) just as a thank you gift for dinner at someone’s place. Or on commerce corner. Just say pay for shipping and it’s yours. Coworkers, church, volunteer gigs, maybe the local fire house or AFW, rotary club.

Best way would be to find a Latin restaurant that is byob and makes sangria out of the wine that you bring. Great for parties as well, white or red. Or to make mulled wine in winter if its a red. Use one for a bottle probe in your wine fridge? Or you can use them to test aging in various ways that you store your wine.

Sell it to the teens out behind the local middle school. Kids will pay most anything (it’s dad’s money, so . . . .)