Leftover Wine???

I am often asked how long a bottle of wine, once it is open, can be stored before it goes bad. And this weekend I read an article in Food & Wine Magazine where the writer opened a bottle of high end California Pinot and conducted a daily “taste test” creating a "taste time line" beginning at day 1 and ending at day 20. By day 5 things were getting pretty ugly and by day 20 the tasting notes sounded more like notes taken during a science experiment then a wine tasting!

All of this talk brings up my husbands favorite wine joke or at least the one he shares most often with wine clients and one I am sure you have heard before…What is the difference between Martha Stewart and a real woman? When Martha has left over wine she freezes it in ice cube trays to use in different recipes as needed and there is no waste. A real woman asks, “leftover wine?” But even as a real woman I often have wine left over whether it was from a dinner party with friends or just a regular weekday meal. While most of us do not want to force ourselves to finish the bottle we also do not want a good bottle of wine to go to waste. So I have some recommendations for you to help preserve your wine.

First off younger wines will generally be less affected by being open for a day or two then older wines. While the opening of an older wine a bit before serving and even decanting the older vintage can allow the wine to reach its pinnacle, older wines are less stable and can begin to go over the other side quite quickly. I recommend opening these mature wines only when you know they can be enjoyed in their entirety, in one evening. Both whites as well as reds should be stored in the refrigerator once they are open. This will slow down the aging of an open bottle of wine. Make sure you put the cork or a stopper back into the bottle too. Let the wines warm up a bit before enjoying the remainder, obviously longer for the reds then the whites. For those of you needing to store the wine more than just one day I strongly suggest using compressed nitrogen. I am not a fan of the plungers that supposedly remove air from the bottles and find nitrogen to be the only product that seems to make any real difference. This gas is squirted into the bottle and weighing more then oxygen displaces the oxygen and creates a layer and a seal between the wine and the air. Once the stopper is removed the gas dissipates. This method while better then nothing will not store your wines indefinitely. By day five even with gas, you are pushing it.

So the moral to the story is be prepared to drink your wines as soon after you open them as possible. There are only about four glasses of wine in each bottle, so for a couple this should not be difficult and for a solo wine imbiber two glasses the first night and two the next should take care of it! If you have any problems call a friend to help polish off the bottle. After all, what are friends for? And wine is always more enjoyable shared with someone you care about.