hello there!

I am wondering what you all do to seal your wine once you open a bottle. Do you just push the cork back into it? Or do you buy those wine stoppers?

Any suggestions would be great! Thank you!

It doesn't take long for dat ol' debil oxygen to take its toll on wine. I use a vacu-vin stopper, and place the bottle in the refrigerator. Even then, it's good for at most a couple of days.

quote:

Originally posted by Spenser:
It doesn't take long for dat ol' debil oxygen to take its toll on wine. I use a vacu-vin stopper, and place the bottle in the refrigerator. Even then, it's good for at most a couple of days.

Ditto - vacu-vin is great.

Not often needed...

The bit (sometimes) remaining in a bottle, I cover with a vacuvin-stopper but without doing the actual vacuum pomping.
I don't think it's of any use on less than half a bottle.

We finish it off the next day.
Unless lack of quality is the reason why anything was left at all.
In that case it's left abandonned for a few days and then it goes down the sink.

I've got a vacu-vin, but usually use the empty beer bottle or half-bottle trick for still wines.

Last night, when we opened a bottle of PN, I immediately poured some of the wine into a clean beer bottle. I filled up the beer bottle, inserted the cork from the wine bottle (displacing some of the wine so there is little air left) and stored the full beer bottle in the fridge. The wine will still be great tonight and pretty good tomorrow night.

It would be neat to do an experiement compating the vacuvin with the beer bottle trick.

I've tried freezing wine a few times, but I usually end up using it for cooking. Has anyone had good experience with this method?

I've used the vacu-vin, but I like the argon gas spray even better: it hardly takes any work, and seems to preserve the wine better also.

I have found, tho, that for the daily drinker, usually under $15, that the harshness of some of them actually softens and the wine is actually better the next day. Call me crazy, call me cheap!

quote:

Originally posted by The Schoolmarm:
I've got a vacu-vin, but usually use the empty beer bottle or half-bottle trick for still wines.
I've tried freezing wine a few times, but I usually end up using it for cooking. Has anyone had good experience with this method?

Schoolmarm has it right. I keep a few 375ml bottles around. I use the cork from the newly opened bottle so I know what's in there 3-4 weeks later. If you fill the half bottle to the brim right after the bottle you're drinking is uncorked, it will last at least a month(the taste is about the same as 10 minutes of decanting). I have never found argon or nitrogen or Vacuvinning a half empty bottle to last more than a couple of days.

I find the freezing wine leaves it a bit flat after defrosting. Some acidic wines taste fine, but if you WANT the bracing acidity(Riesling, Chardonnay, etc), they become flabby.

I actually refer to using a 375ml for preservation as the ronmc2 method.