preserving opened bottles

[Michae1_P0wers]

I think the 375 is the best option, but I’m also of the opinion that almost nothing really works all that well once the bottle has been opened. Many disagree obviously. I have had some exceptions over the short term with very young wines, and it seems that some, such as riesling, handle it better than others.

[JKim]

I recork my leftover and stick it in the fridge. The only problem with this method is that sometimes I get home late, dinner is ready and now I have a fridge temp half full bottle. So I open another one and now I have 2 bottles in my fridge. Oh well, I go thru my cellar quicker this way.

[Chris_Seiber]

If you’re in a hurry to warm the wine back up, you can let it run under hot water in your kitchen sink for a few minutes, or set it in a bowl or basin with warm water.

I’ve actually heard that it works fine to microwave it (for all the unaesthetic nature of doing that, there really isn’t anything about the microwave that should affect or hurt wine, as long as you don’t overheat it), but I’ve never done that.

[brianmcbrearty]

I’m content that Chris’s six options cover it more than well enough. I cork and throw into the fridge, only occasionally bothering with a split. And
yeah, running it under warm water brings it up to cellar temp plenty quickly enough. I wouldn’t hesitate to microwave it, but I never feel the need.

[JKim]

I’m a dumbass, never thought to warm up the bottle this way. Thanks guys. <this is where the cheers emoticon would go, except I don’t know how to add it in the mobile version>

[PaulM]

@Jim Karegeannes

@Russell Faulkner

Pour it in a half bottle, sterilise it if you really want.

+1. I use a couple of old screw top saki bottles for this. Rinse the split (and cap) with boiling water if you feel the need.

This storage method works best with higher acid wines, with some improving a day or more after pouring up IMO.
Fridge or counter or cellar storage hasn’t made a difference in my experience. I agree that the fridge would make it too cold to serve with out a warm up period

This. I use 330 and 250 Perrier bottles. I just run the bottles through the dishwasher and rinse afterwards. It’s much easier to pour gently up to the very lip and cap with no air space using a screwtop bottle. Just pour gently (I don’t use a funnel). It’s fine on the counter for several days; I’ve had wine last weeks in the fridge with minimal ill effect. If you need to get a refrigerated bottle up to serving temperature, a tepid (not hot) water bath isn’t my favorite but works ok if you don’t have time to wait.

[brianmcbrearty]

@JKim

I’m a dumbass, never thought to warm up the bottle this way. Thanks guys. <this is where the cheers emoticon would go, except I don’t know how to add it in the mobile version>

Well I know I let LOTS of glasses of poured wine sit on the counter top for an hour to warm up, perhaps in the general area of the stove or something before it one day dawned on me that the ice bucket could just as easily be a warm water bucket. So don’t be too hard on yourself, Dumbass.
Or perhaps we’re the only ones.
I’m definitely not too swift.

[Ryan_Kilkenney]

@JKim

I’m a dumbass, never thought to warm up the bottle this way. Thanks guys. <this is where the cheers emoticon would go, except I don’t know how to add it in the mobile version>

This idea dawned on me while warming up refridgerated milk in the middle of the night when my daughter was a baby.

I used to be very particular about preserving wine after it had been opened. I don’t know if I’ve become less sensitive to oxidation, or if the wines I’m drinking now just hold up better, but I rarely find a problem anymore after one night in the fridge.

[Pat_Martin]

Freezing works wonders… thaw with hot tap water in a large pot, takes <30 mins even for a fully frozen wine…

Only caveat: doesn’t work as well with whites as the tartaric acids precipitate and things get a bit off, and also old/very mature reds seem to lose a bit of something in the freeze-thaw process.

[J.Durham]

@Paul Marquardt

@Jim Karegeannes

@Russell Faulkner

Pour it in a half bottle, sterilise it if you really want.

+1. I use a couple of old screw top saki bottles for this. Rinse the split (and cap) with boiling water if you feel the need.

This storage method works best with higher acid wines, with some improving a day or more after pouring up IMO.
Fridge or counter or cellar storage hasn’t made a difference in my experience. I agree that the fridge would make it too cold to serve with out a warm up period

This. I use 330 and 250 Perrier bottles. I just run the bottles through the dishwasher and rinse afterwards. It’s much easier to pour gently up to the very lip and cap with no air space using a screwtop bottle. Just pour gently (I don’t use a funnel). It’s fine on the counter for several days; I’ve had wine last weeks in the fridge with minimal ill effect. If you need to get a refrigerated bottle up to serving temperature, a tepid (not hot) water bath isn’t my favorite but works ok if you don’t have time to wait.

I also use the Perrier method, but go with the smaller bottles that are slightly over 6oz, pour to top, and stick in fridge. I can get about a week with young bdx or Cali Cab this way. With the smaller bottle and warm water, can get it back to temp in about 5mins. Day 2 typically tastes like a long decant. I’ve tried most everything and this seems to work the best for me. Vacu-vin lost the nose…

[Ian_P]

@John O'Sullivan

I have a bad habit of opening a bottle and finishing it, on the rationalization that it won’t be as good the next day. I do have a vacu-vin deal, which I guess works OK.
Is there any product out there that holds say 375 ml. The idea would be to pop a 750 and then immediately pour half into this vessel and quickly seal it with minimal air hitting the wine. I’ve tried using old splits, but feel there’s a sanitary issue in getting them clean. I guess I could pour off half the 750 into a large glass and seal the remainder, but that would still leave a lot of air in the bottle.
2 glasses at night would be a lot healthier than 4.

I had a long conversation with Lou Kapcsandy (incredibly knowledgeable and has the record to back it up!!) about this. I use the vacu-vin and put the wine back in the cellar and I find the wine is best on day 2. Lou isn’t a fan of vacu-vin, he thinks the rubber stopper kills the wine. He believes 100% that argon gas is the ONLY way to preserve the wine. In fact he said he uses argon gas when corking the wine, which is why he wants people to slow ox his wine and not pop and pour.

[Frank_Drew]

I’ve been using 500, 330 and 250 ml bottles for years (after trying then giving up on Vacuvin), and I think the method works fine. I almost never refrigerate reds, but I do keep them at cellar temp.

[Robert_Grenley]

Immediately pour into a smaller bottle and close it up. I find a screw top half bottle (and some smaller depending on how much or little you want to save) very easy, as you can fill it up to the top and screw it closed and not worry about airspace to allow you to recork. I have put my whites in the fridge, and the reds I have left out or put in the cellar at 52 degrees, but I am only trying to save these for a day or two at most. I have started to experiment with the WineSave argon gas in the can that Meadows and Gilman and many others have recommended, and though I have not used it enough to know, I would think it works far better than the VacuVin whicih I consider fairly useless.

[M_Hudson]

@Randy Bowman

We’ve tried them all and found the most efficient is refrigeration, unless you plan on keeping it for 3 months before trying it again. Most of the time we have a Haley’s Corker in the bottle instead of a cork. Stelvans are no problem, screw them back on and throw them in the refrigerator. (Caveat, we keep our refrigerator on the cold side.) Carrie can tell if a wine has been gassed and occasionally, I can too. Some white wines just fade quickly, no matter what you do, but the bigger reds seem to hold up pretty well when refrigerated.

So your telling me you have actually NOT finished a bottle you opened in the same night?

[Larry_Link]

What I usually do is pour out 1/2 of the bottle into a leftover clean 375 ml bottle. I fill it into the neck, then vacu-vin the air out of the headspace. The vacu-vin works really well pulling the air out of the wine. When I use this technique with white wines I use a clear glass leftover Sauternes bottle and you can see the air bubbles literally being pulled out of the wine (for a few seconds the wine looks carbonated). I then refrigerate for usually not longer than a week. The seal on the rubber stopper works well and seems to hold the pressure as you can hear the air getting sucked back in when its released. As others have stated, larger framed reds do better, but I’ve had good success with whites as well.

I don’t understand why people think that vacu-vin is ineffective. I know its not a true vacuum, but I’ve sucked wine up thru the rubber stopper before so it definitely extracts a good bit of the air from the bottle. The rubber stopper does not come in contact with the wine, so that shouldn’t be a problem. This system has to reduce oxygen contact compared to just popping a cork in a wine bottle and refrigerating. What are the complaints?

Larry

[Alan_Rath]

Larry, not sure if people are saying vacu-vin is ineffective as much as they contend that, along with air, it removes aromatic volatiles as well. To be honest, I think the amount of oxygen introduced during the process of filling half a bottle and stoppering it quickly is probably pretty minimal, would be interesting to do a test where you fill two half bottles, vacu-vin one, and just stopper the other.