Looking for advice on the best way to store unfinished Bordeaux.
While Burgundy/Champagne bottles get finished in one meal, I usually spread Bordeaux (mostly 1st/2nd growths from the ‘80s/‘90s) over multiple meals. My current method is to decant half using Coravin and store the other half, but the stored wine seems muted and lacks freshness when revisited (usually within a month).
I’ve seen suggestions to transfer unfinished wine into 375ml screw-top bottles, filled to eliminate air. Planning to try this—found these on Amazon:
Second the recommendation of Repour. Your coravin should be working better than it seems to be. I do hear about this from people though. I use coravin at work all the time to sample from bottles over a period of months. But if you’re dealing with old wines the corks may have lost the elasticity needed to effectively close up after the needle is removed.
Repour actively removes oxygen from the headspace, so for splitting a bottle into two sessions it works well.
And it’s not just air/oxygen at work. I don’t think there’s anything in the Coravin system that prevents volatile aroma compounds from evaporating into the headspace, even with argon there instead of air. I think the loss of those may well explain the dullness people find with Coravined wines after a while.
They are 100ml bottles with reusable plastic caps. Just fill to the very top with zero airspace (in practical terms, you overfill a tad and then clean off the sides of the bottles after filling. It is a bit messy going for zero airspace) or close to it, and you are set for a good long while.
In theory, the wine will be fine for several weeks but in practical terms I try to finish them off within a week because they can start to slightly lose freshness depending on the wine and how soon after opening the bottle you poured off the samples.
The best part of this approach is the flexibility. I have a relative who loves wine but can only have a glass a day. Now any bottle becomes a week’s worth of servings. Or it is good if you want to bring in a sample of something really good from the night before to your local wine shop and share with those who sold you the bottle. I also find them handy at the end of tastings so that people can take home leftovers of their favorite bottles. But if you prefer, they come in other sizes as well to suit your specific needs.
It’s a fair concern and there may be something to it, but I haven’t yet seen any evidence that this happens enough to have a sensory impact. I routinely analyze a range of volatile aroma compounds in wines and have analyzed plenty of Coravined or partial bottles. Volatile loss just isn’t something that we see on any significant level unless the compound is oxygen-sensitive, in which case we do see drops, especially in partials without Coravin, of course.
I found that coravin for me works a lot better on whites than reds. Reds would always taste muted even if it has been coravined 2 days ago but for whites I felt like they kept fresh for a lot longer.
I like the Repour product but still consume the remainder of the bottle by the next day, certainly no more than two days later. Any sense of whether you can push it longer without any drop in quality?
That’s very interesting – the part about the volatile loss only being measurable where the compound is oxygen-sensitive.
My theory was based in part on anecdotal evidence – using a Vacuvin pump years ago that (very much) in theory created a vacuum. I found the wine didn’t degrade too much if you pumped out a quarter or so of bottle (which would still leave a fair deal of air – certainly not a vacuum), but more than that and the wine was markedly duller after pumping. The loss of aromatics was so consistent that I stopped using those things.
I assumed that reducing the air pressure drew out the volatiles. I found much less degradation just leaving a partly full bottle (or half a bottle poured into a 375ml bottle) in the fridge. (I always refrigerated bottles after opening.) If it were just oxygen contact, I wouldn’t expect the Vacuvin’ed bottles to be noticeably worse.
I’ve never tested this with a vacuvin. For sure putting the headspace under vacuum will increase evaporation of some things into the headspace considerably more than just leaving it out, or coravining. I am surprised that you found more degradation in the vacuvined wine relative to a simple partial. I find partials to get wrecked by oxygen, though 375 decants do much better.
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned regarding the use of 375ml bottles is that for best results, fill the 375 immediately on opening. Don’t wait until the end of the evening when you decide you aren’t going to finish the bottle.
