How To Store Open Wine
A wine spends most of it’s life developing in the bottle. After the wine is opened and the air mixes, the wine starts to die. At this point you have only a limited number of days to drink it. The older a wine is, the more delicate and fragile it becomes. Thus an older wine will spoil much quicker than a younger wine. A younger wine conversely benefits from a little air, artifically aging and rapidly developing character.
There are two practical methods for storing an opened wine.
Stop and Refrigerate
After the wine is opened, pour a glass, stop the bottle, and refrigerate. The recorked bottle limits the exposure to oxygen and the lowered temperature slows the reaction. This method provides the least amount of preservation for the wine allowing at most 3 days. Be sure to remove the bottle of wine beforehand it to bring it back up to room temperature. Reds will want an hour or two, whites 30 minutes or more.
Nitrogen
After the wine is opened, pour a glass and spray the gas into the bottle. The heavier nitrogen will form a layer of protection over the wine preventing the wine from breathing. This will preserve the wine for a longer period. At $10 a can, protecting over 100 bottles, it’s worth the 10 cents a squirt.
Stoppers
When stopping the wine, use a rubber stopper of some sort. A pair of these can run as little as $10. With a stopper the risk of cork debris falling into the wine is eliminated, the bottle is easier to stop and reopen, and the seal is often tighter.
The Problem with Vacuums
The idea of vacuums is that air is pulled out of the bottle, creating a vacuum, so the oxygen does not affect the wine. In reality these devices are cheap and do not pull all the air out, especially with smaller amounts of leftover wine. The vacuum does not preserve as well as the nitrogen method. For the small cost associated, it’s better to buy a can of wine preserver.
Conclusion
In the end, the amount of oxidation you allow is personal choice. Older vintages you will drink the same day. For younger wines, if you don’t have anything else, put the cork back in the bottle, and put it in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. Otherwise, go spend $20 on a can of wine preserver and a stopper.
8 Responses to “How To Store Open Wine”
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How long does the nitrogen method preserve wine? I’ve been using the vacuum and don’t have any complaints — but I do polish the bottle off within a day or two.
Some say they’ve kept bottles for monthes after opening it and spraying it in. That, in my opinion, is silly. I’m of the philosophy that life is to short not to drink good wine.
Sometimes I only want 1 or 2 glasses a day, which for one person could technically stretch a bottle out to 5 days of drinking. I can understand not finishing a whole bottle by yourself, but a bottle should be able to be finished within a week.
Have you noticed any differences between when you open your wine and after you store it vacuumed?
Perhaps we should conduct an experiment next week:
Purchase four bottles of a young red wine
Open three, drink two glasses out of each
Use three methods of storage: vacuum, nitrogen, and refigeration
Wait three days, open the fourth bottle, and test against the rest.
As a side note, check out this article that talks about a winery filling their bottles with nitrogen to combat changes from corks to screw tops.
An experiment that lets me drink more wine? Count me in.
Those in the know seem to think that argon is the protective gas of choice. It has several advantages:
* it is inert (unlike nitrogen)
* it is heavier than air
The second point results in the gas staying nicely put on the surface of the wine, creating a more stable barrier.
Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any 100% argon available in consumer packaging (but I haven’t looked that hard either . . . partially used bottles are an easily avoided problem).
Bongo, my favorite quote in awhile “partially used bottles are an easily avoided problem”. Keep up the great comments!
red wines sold by the glass at restaurants can be on the shelf for a longer period and people keep ordering it. very rarely is there anyone who says that it tastes so bad they cannot drink it.
I felt the need to speak up. I found this site by searching for a cheap nitrogen delivery system to store food (read opened bottles of spirits) under. Nitrogen gas is inert in this context. A nitrogen molecule, such as those found in the air, has one of the strongest and most stable of all chemical bonds. Those bonds are broken by lightening and special biological processes. Nitrogen gas is lighter than “air” as air’s major components are nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and carbon dioxide. Nitrogen is the lightest of those listed. The nitrogen wouldn’t settle on the wine, it would displace the air and its roughly 20% oxygen. Argon is more expensive than argon to buy partially(mostly?) due to it’s scarcity.