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Best way to keep a partially drunk bottle of wine - a novel approach ?

RogerS

RogerS

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Been mulling this on and off for ages and keep coming back to getting an inert gas in the bottle to displace the air. I was after a sure fire way. Then I had a brainwave,

If I got a box deep enough to put the bottle in with a few inches over. Take a Vac-u-Vin and use it on the wine. Fill the box with CO2 or nitrogen…think they are both heavier than air. Put the bottle inside and release the vacuum. I reckon that will suck in the CO2 very well.

Or am I missing something?
 
If it's white wine, just put the screw top back and put it in the fridge.
If it's red, screw top on and put it in a cool place.

No need for gases and gadgets. 😃🍷
 
The Coravin system is what restaurants use (inc. us) and is argon gas. We use this for BTG. Only use the needle system - the one for screw tops only keeps the wine for circa 10 days (despite what they claim). Argon needle system through cork lasts months.

If you don't want to do that, then pour the wine into much smaller bottles and seal those using a pump extractor.

What you don't want is much air. Oxides wine fast.

If you want the wine to be drinkable only use CO2 in sparkling wine.
 
PS - Ignore Andy if the wine is £££. Expensive red wine will oxidise inside two days if you don't use a preservation system and both smell and taste corked. OK for plonk, but not for fine wines. Anything heavily oaked like a classed Bordeaux will taste off in no time. Good Burgundy is difficult at the best of times.
 
We don't understand the meaning of a partial bottle of wine. :)

When we have wine with our dinner, I decant the entire bottle (red or white depending on the meal) for a minimum of one hour in a glass decanter made for 750ml. Some of the red wines decant for three hours. If we have guests for dinner, I'll decant two bottles.
 
My wife can't drink alcohol and I dirink very little but on the odd occasion I open a bottle of red it lasts me four days and I've never noticed any spoilage or difference in taste.
I am however definitely not a wine aficionado. ;)
 
Stopped imbibing the stuff in January...just a coupla beers a week now😇. The VacuVin stoppers I have in the 'shop will be used to suck out most of the air from my Maloof Oil wine bottle - Rob
 
As Adrian has said, decanting half into a clean bottle and keeping that, stopper but not in the fridge works well enough for me.

I think the vacuvin does more harm than good, lowering the pressure to increase the loss of volatiles which are the flavour. The bungs are really useful though, they make a nice seal on the inside of a 22mm tank connector while fixing a leaking isolator valve.
 
Sheffield Tony said:
As Adrian has said, decanting half into a clean bottle and keeping that, stopper but not in the fridge works well enough for me.

I think the vacuvin does more harm than good, lowering the pressure to increase the loss of volatiles which are the flavour. The bungs are really useful though, they make a nice seal on the inside of a 22mm tank connector while fixing a leaking isolator valve.
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Two excellent tips there, Tony. Thank you👍
 
I do recommend the Coravin system (but off eBay - not new) if you are really into wine. I've been a lifelong en primeur collector of classed Bordeaux, so older vintages can be serious money now. Someone used to drinking a specific wine - say Chateau Palmer of a given year - will have an inbuilt expectation of smell and taste. A two day old half bottle of 75cl wine will smell and taste oxidized to me (even blind) and if it is a £200 bottle of special wine then it is worth preserving. For a £10 bottle of Malbec I wouldn't bother.

I do use vacuvin but only for cheap stuff really that if I don't fancy drinking it I will put in a coq au vin or a red wine sauce.

Personally I don't use the Coravin CO2 system for sparking wines. We open a lot of champagne and English fine sparkling, such as Sugrue, and we always put a fizz stopper in (very cheap) as soon as we have poured. This keeps most of the fizz for about a day, maybe two.

CO2 is hopeless for preserving still wines in my experience. It is soluble in wine (so fine for sparkling) and tends to create a light fizz similar to when juice begins to ferment. It adds acidity, and tannins (from oaked wines say - whether genuine or fake oaking) taste more tannic.
 
Cabinetman said:
The word stopper is appropriate, might the marbles not be in the way when pouring? lol.
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They help the bouquet roll around ones mouth when sampling the Chateau Yquem 2009 and one can really smell the 2% of Petit Verdot ;)
 
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Well if you can't get it from Aldi or the same stuff in Sainsbury's at twice the price then it spells out wine snobbery to me ;) But then I freely admit to knowing nowt about wine and not caring a single jot. If I like the taste I drink it if I don't then I won't whether it costs a tenner or a couple of hundred.
I've had some (apparently) very good wines given as gifts which were completely wasted on me and sampled some on the cruise ship to Alaska and on various holidays which I didn't enjoy at all.

Give me a beer any day of the week. (y)
 
AndyP said:
Newkie broon comes in smaller bottles too, less likely to have any left offers to go flat eh?:)
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:ROFLMAO: Ashamed to say I never was a fan Andy. TBH I don't have any friends who drink it either. I think those hardened Geordies would prefer the standard bottles.
Common as muck are people in these parts and if you don't understand the dialect you wouldn't know whether you're being sworn at or praised. ;)
 
Lons said:
Give me a beer any day of the week. (y)
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I tend to get a few bottles in each week, current favourites are Hicks bottle conditioned 'Cornish Ale' and Greene King 'Abbot', both 5%. It has been known for No.1 daughter in Carlisle to let me sample a few local tipples when we see her at Christmas - Rob
 
Lons said:
If you don't understand the dialect you wouldn't know whether you're being sworn at or praised.
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As a relative newcomer (a "blow-in" back home) t' Nathumbaland, Ah fully concoh....Gan roun' 'ere, gabbin' wey neighbours, Geordie ca-an be thick an' faast.

They also have an endearing habit of incorporating an extra vowel, and/or a light glottal stop in each word: "Roa-ode" for example; "T' Gre-ate Nath Roa-ode, now t' A1", "Foa-oak at Chu-urch on Soonday", "Spo-oak t' 'im". Lovely!!
 
Well you could just buy box wine and the problem is solved, assuming it is available in the UK. No air gets into the bag so it keeps for a few weeks. I don't drink enough wine to justify buying them but the lushes in the group could. ;)

Pete
 
Just looked at this thread.
Rog you are a disgrace to the Woodies, left over wine indeed!
Either drink it or cook with it. :)

Alternative, there are some very good wines in boxes with taps. Open tap, fill glass, close tap, no air into box.
The 5litre box is very economical. :cool:

We had a friend years ago who was supposed to be a connoisseur.
He and wife were invited for dinner.
I keep all my empty wine bottles, especially the really good wine. The bottles are sterilized before being re-used.

So a couple of days before the dinner I decant from the box, dry white, into the bottle. Bang in the cork, then into fridge.
Before dinner the bottle is decanted 'to breath'. At the dinner table he went through all the sniffs, tastes etc. and declared it excellent.

Wife and I had to hide the smiles and shake our heads in agreement. :ROFLMAO:

What would this behaviour be classed as? Peasant?
 
Phil
That's like like using a Marks and Spencer or Sainsbury's carrier bag to carry your groceries home from Lidl.

from my memory of RSA isn't Woolworths one of the higher class stores or am I mistaken? I remember being advised to buy steaks from there and excellent they were too. In the UK it was a cheap store chain
 
Bob
There is a:
WW Clothes - pathetic quality at a high price (there is a thread of some jocks I bought) loss making division.
WW Food - always been high quality high price, but the competition from some of the other grocers has forced them to reprice. Wife does the meat buying, mainly chicken or pork, red meat not on our menu, too much protein. Still good profit making division.
The wine is in the food section (expensive) with some other household goods (expensive)
They also have a coffee and snacks shop next to the food shop. The cake etc looks very good, not yet tried it. There are lots of coffee and snack shops, good competition. Mugg & Bean, Cappuccino, Flattery, Lucky Bread, La Coco, all within a short distance.

They also have to compete in the on-line shopping and also on-line shop&deliver against the other grocers.
Their loss making is actually a venture in Oz, they burnt their fingers. Just another SA company who did not do their homework before investing.
 
For those who sell wines, (eg me) there are a percentage of people who are clued up on wines and would not be fooled by the re-bottling trick. Most people who are seriously into wine specialise. So for example you might well fool me (say) on a Burgundy or Barolo, but no way you could pass off a classed Bordeaux such as Ch. Palmer. Likewise small estate Riesling such as JJ Prum. Those are my two areas of knowledge.

The reason we use Coravin is we sell some wines by the glass. I need to retain condition.

There is in fact a thriving market in fake wines. People sell the empty bottles, foils and corks on eBay from say a 1st growth such as Ch. Latour (expensive ++), fill it with some ordinary oaky Bordeaux and pass it off as the real thing. Collectors etc buy en primeur or from the likes of BBR so it won't fool them as they won't buy odd bottles. The premium auction houses are fully wised up to this. There are a few giveaways sometimes.

The wine boxes are not that effective at excluding air. The wine oxidises to a degree. That said they are useful and I sometimes buy boxed wines specifically for cooking. The 3 litre Shiraz from Lidl is pretty drinkable and makes a decent cooking wine too for red wine sauces. Decent price at around £18. Better than buying the cooking wine boxes available wholesale to restaurants.
 
It's 18 years since we were in RSA Phil. Friends who used to live there recommended their aged steaks especially and food in general.
 
AJB Temple said:
The wine boxes are not that effective at excluding air. The wine oxidises to a degree.
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I always cook with wine. Sometimes I will also add it to the food.

Adrian, I am a peasant regarding wine, so box wine is fine for me. A 5litre will last 10-15 days.
Last price was ZAR189.50 at Pick-n-Pay for their dry white.
 
So that's about £8.70 in British money Phil. Bargain for 5l. We pay an arm and a leg in tax, so you can triple that cost here at the cheapest end. 5l is 40 standard measures. SA is a good producer so that helps.
 
AJB Temple said:
So that's about £8.70 in British money Phil. Bargain for 5l. We pay an arm and a leg in tax, so you can triple that cost here at the cheapest end. 5l is 40 standard measures. SA is a good producer so that helps.
Click to expand...

Adrian we also suffer from the taxes.
Our useless Govt. in their budget just nail 'sin' taxes each year, this year also added to the fuel tax just as Donny Duck did his thing.
PnP has always tended to keep the wine prices the same for at least 6 months.
I watch their prices carefully and when I see gap just buy 4/5 boxes. (I can fit 6 in the bottom of the garage cupboard)
 
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