Wine 101: What To Do With Leftover Wine

If you are like me, you enjoy a glass of wine daily, or at least several days of the week. The problem is, for those who don't have a wine drinking crowd living in their home, it's impossible, or at least unhealthy, to consume the entire bottle at a weekday meal. I've grappled with this ever since my earliest wine writing days, when sample bottles began arriving at my front door from wine regions across the globe. I also learned early in my wine studies that to get the best grasp of wine, you need to taste, taste and taste. I do what I'm told and in that vein, I have had no hesitation about opening a bottle, even if there's only myself or one other person sipping with me.

As you learn more about wine flavors, sight and aromas (please see my past posts), you will also learn that wine oxidizes on your counter quite quickly. How can you tell when it's gone over? The research shows that simply uncorking a bottle of wine introduces enough oxygen into the wine that it begins to lose freshness from that very minute. If you simply replace the cork back into that bottle, you've left a dose of that oxygen in the bottle. If the oxygen just sits in there with the remainder of your wine, the lovely wine you tasted one day takes on characters that you may not love the next day. Just a sniff and a sip can tell you: it's a bit sour, may smell more like vinegar and you'll be hard pressed to find the lovely floral and fruit aromas you did on the first day.

There's no hard and fast rule to how long wine will stay fresh or begin to deteriorate. It depends to some extend on the grape, the quality of the wine and the wine making procedure. Typically, the nicer and more complex the wine, the more likely it will degrade quickly (figures -- the nice bottle you most regret not finishing.) And those with higher acidity, like a tasty Sauvignon Blanc or a citrusy Pinot Gris also have a tendency to keep together a bit longer.

So how can you "save" your wine to enjoy for at least another day or two? Here's a list of how to treat your wine bottle with a little TLC:

-Immediately re-cork your wine and pop it in the fridge.

-Consider purchasing a Vacuvin Winen Saver pump with rubber stoppers.

-Some suggested transfering the leftover wine into a smaller container where less air can reach it.

So, don't feel that you can't open a bottle of wine on a regular basis for fear of spoilage. There are solutions....all in the name of training your palate. Taste, taste, taste is the best advice. Questions? Comments? Please feel free and I will respond.

Tagged as: wine 101, wining and wine

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Laura Levy Shatkin served for 10 years as food and wine critic for the Chicago Reader. Later, she became an Emmy-nominated executive producer for Taste, a 30-minute food and wine show on NBC-5 Chicago, which later merged into www.WineTasteTV.com, where Ms. Levy is a partner/owner. Today, she teaches private wine classes and hosts wine parties for consumers and firms, and continues to tell the video stories of wine, girlfriends and wine travel on her TCW blog, Wine…ing Women.