Brian…that is an awesome avatar. Made me laugh out loud.
I think the long answer is this: there are a number of things you can do, each of which has some tendency to help retard the aging / oxidation. Doing the more powerful things and/or doing more of them at once gives you the most protection. Your menu of choices, in order from most preserving value to least preserving value, is probably:
- Coravin
- Freezing (good tool for if you have a half bottle left and are leaving town or otherwise won’t get to it for awhile).
- Filling a half bottle or other smaller bottle (e.g. Fiji water bottle) all the way to full right after opening the 750ml
- Putting the leftover wine into the fridge
- Argon gas
- Vacuvin
- Recorking the 750 ml
If you just opened a 2008 Bordeaux and it will hold up well or maybe even improve with a lot more air, and you plan to drink the other half in the next few days, you might just recork the 750ml and let it go. If you opened something (maybe an older wine, or a cheaper wine) that you want to evolve/erode as little as possible and/or something you’re not going to get back to for several days, then you might pour a full 375 or Fiji bottle, recork/screw shut, and put it in the fridge. And various gradations in between.
Try to think of it this way: (1) how much protection does this wine need against declining – i.e. is this a robust young or too-young wine on its way up, or is it a wine which is only going downhill either because of its age or the type or quality of wine that it is, and (2) how long are you going to keep it? Based on your answers to those two questions, use more or less protection from the menu of options available to you.
Re splits, they are on a big comeback:
It was a pretty awesome idea. My then 2, now 9 year old son had a “the crackers” t-shirt.
If I know I am only drinking half the bottle I will immediately use a funnel and 12 oz. beer bottle for a quick recorking with a levered stopper. Into the fridge and fresh as a daisy tomorrow. Take the bottle out of the fridge in the morning and pull the cork for a few hours of slow-ox
The 2007 Alesia Sonoma Coast that I just poured from last night is singing.
No offense to anyone, but my belief is that we over-think something so simple as this: Most wines are relatively durable when stuck back in the fridge, corked, just for the night. The cold fridge retards too much degradation. I’ve been doing the same thing for 20+ years of drinking a couple glasses every evening and going back to that bottle the next day. A greater percentage of the wines I pop are actually a bit better the next day. I’m digging right now the '09 Roilette Cuvee Tardive that I popped last night. My only caveat is that this is what I do for my daily drinkers, which can be high quality wines as well, that are young (or youngish). I do not store mature wines this way, and if I intend to pop a very mature bottle, the intent is the kill it that night. Back to my point, young wines are relatively durable.
It’s interesting how wide of a range of opinions you get on this topic. It’s probably a combination of how well or poorly an individual perceives wines 1-3 days after opening, and what kinds of wines the person in question tends to drink. Some people’s perspectives and experiences are what Robert describes, and others will say that they think almost every wine goes downhill by day 2.
Over the years, I’ve trended towards greater appreciation/tolerance of day 2-3 wine than I used to have, but it could be that over that same period, the average quality of the bottle I open has gone up substantially.
I usually err on the safe side in terms of storing partial bottles, though, for two reasons: (1) I never know for certain what is the day that I’m going to get to the rest of the bottle (e.g. I may think when I first open the bottle that I’m drinking the rest tomorrow, but it could end up being 2 or 3 days later), and (2) if I think the wine would benefit from more air, I can always let it breathe more, but if it’s getting tired from being open, there’s no going back the other direction.
I agree most young wines are fine or better the next day. If it’s possibly going to be longer I’ll gas (left over bottles) or do the half bottle thing (when planning ahead).
The big issue for me was with older/delicate wines, since I have a lot. Using a funnel into a half bottle introduced too much oxygen, so some of these fell apart, even the next day. I got some small gauge tubing and carefully siphon into a half, and that’s worked very well the few times I’ve done it now. (I suppose if you wanted to be extra careful you could sparge the half, too.)
This seems pretty sound to me, though the Tardive may be a special kind of resilient.
I usually just use the Vacuvin (on the superstition that it does absolutely anything at all whatsoever), and stick the bottle in the fridge. I don’t think it ever tastes the same the next day, sometimes a little better, often a little less pleasant. But it’s usually fine the next day.
Always kill an old or particularly fragile bottle in one evening, which ends up meaning I never drink those by myself. That’s the stuff to share anyway though. 
I don’t understand the chemistry and it’s certainly counterintuitive but it’s indeed been my experience that open bottles left on the counter last much better than recorked bottles left on the counter, and much, much better than any kludge involving half bottles or vacuum thingamajigs. Better still if you can stick it back in a cool cellar.
The technique I have developed over the last couple of years seems complicated, but works very well in my experience. If I have any portion of a wine left over at the end of the night, I will vacuum pump it and put it in the fridge, then the next morning before work I take it out and put it on the counter. By the time I get home, the wine is back up to drinking temp, but the night in the fridge has significantly slowed its decline. Maybe I’m particularly sensitive to it, but a wine left at room temp overnight, vacuumed or not, is rarely drinkable to me.
Thanks all for your replies. I usually pour off a half and refrigerate it, but always wondered about the decant effect. No, I don’t do this with older wines, and of course it depends upon the delicacy of the wine. Still, Keith’s experience strikes me as odd. Anyone else find that it is better, on the whole, to leave a bottle unopened? I tend to drink Oregon pinots. I have a hard time seeing that treatment not degrade the wine. Now a young Bordeaux or nebbiolo, perhaps…
The best way to preserve the wine (without using gas, vacuvin, or Coravin is a very full 375ml in the refrigerator.
That being said, and please don’t take this as a criticism, we’ve all done it, but if you like the wine better on Day 2, you wasted it on Day 1.
How careful is your observation and comparison, Keith? As a general case, what you describe is at odds with the conditions governing chemical reactions, not to mention others’ experience. The idea that a half-open bottle on the mantel, or even in the cellar, develops more slowly than a refrigerated bottle, especially one with limited head space, is frankly incredible.
Otoh, younger wines (especially southern Rhones, ime) can develop favorably during generous overnight airing and show better the second day.
I’m not sure what ‘kludge’ means, but pouring remainders into a half-bottle is a pretty simple procedure.
Freezing works great for arresting oxidization, but you have to plan ahead (wine needs to thaw).
I’ve found freezing steals away some acidity.
I agree it’s counterintuitive but this is my experience over many years and probably hundreds of bottles.
However, I wasn’t making any claims about bottles put in the refrigerator. I was comparing open bottles to vacuvined bottles or bottles transferred to 375s. I imagine putting the open bottle in the refrigerator would preserve it as well as putting it in the cellar. But once you’re decanting it into another bottle you are introducing variables besides the speed of chemical reactions because you’ve just exposed the wine to a whole lot more oxygen than if it hadn’t been decanted. That’s usually enough to kill the wine by the next day in my experience, regardless of what you do next. Anyway, I can’t explain it, but the “minimal intervention” approach has consistently worked best for me. Just leave the wine in the bottle and come back the next day.
I misunderstood, apologies. Agree that vacuvin’s aren’t worth much. Cooling (refrigerator) slows the rate of any reactions, which is the main thing, imo. I used to wonder about exposure to oxygen during the pouring off into 375’s, but my experience is that, if done expeditiously, the ensuing oxidation is substantially less than leaving the wine in a half-empty 750 for 18 hours or so.
Ime, pouring into a 375, if you do it right when the original 750 is first opened, has an affect over several days similar to that of slow-oxygenating a large bottle - a la Audouze - over, say, the length of a day. So we take this measure when we don’t think we’ll get back to the second half for a couple or three days. It’s a practical technique if you want to drink through a glass each of two or three wines at dinner with a significant other.
I agree it’s counterintuitive but this is my experience over many years and probably hundreds of bottles.
However, I wasn’t making any claims about bottles put in the refrigerator. I was comparing open bottles to vacuvined bottles or bottles transferred to 375s. I imagine putting the open bottle in the refrigerator would preserve it as well as putting it in the cellar. But once you’re decanting it into another bottle you are introducing variables besides the speed of chemical reactions because you’ve just exposed the wine to a whole lot more oxygen than if it hadn’t been decanted. That’s usually enough to kill the wine by the next day in my experience, regardless of what you do next. Anyway, I can’t explain it, but the “minimal intervention” approach has consistently worked best for me. Just leave the wine in the bottle and come back the next day.
For what it’s worth, I’ve started to notice this too, at least with young red wines. Opened bottles sitting out on the counter with the cork in seem to be fresher the next day than when they’re decanted into a .375 bottle and put in the fridge, which seems to dull the wine. I really start to notice some degradation on the third day, though, so if I want to keep anything longer than next-day, the .375 in the fridge is a better option.
Via precipitation? Compared with comparable bottle just left open / cooled?