It’s important to keep an opened bottle of wine well to preserve its fresh flavors.

Ever finished a drinking session with a leftover bottle of wine?

Perhaps you opened one too many bottles during a dinner party.

No matter. We are here to help you keep your leftover wine in the best possible state, so that when you reopen your bottle it tastes almost as good as when you first opened it.

Oxidation is the main cause of your wine going bad. There’s a love/hate relationship between oxygen and wine. A certain amount of oxidation is desirable when you first open the bottle. This is to unlock the character of the wine and to let it express its flavors and aromas. It will also ‘soften’ the tannins in the wine and make it less harsh on your palate. However, prolonged oxidation will cause the wine to turn to vinegar.

In order to store the wine well, you will have to control the reaction between wine and oxygen. There are multiple ways you can do this:

 1- Slow the oxidation process

Recork the wine bottle and refrigerate the wine immediately after the drinking session. Refrigerating the wine leaves it in a low-temperature environment and this slows down the reaction of the leftover wine with the oxygen in the bottle. However, even with this method, you’d best consume the wine within 2 weeks from refrigerating it. Otherwise, the wine will still slowly turn bad.

 2- Reduce the oxygen in the bottle

Pumping out the air in the bottle leaves almost no oxygen to react with the wine. There are tools out there that allow you to pump out the oxygen in the bottle. They tend to also function as a cork and is placed at the top of the bottle. You should still refrigerate the wine were using this method.

 3- Replace the oxygen in the bottle

A more high-tech solution would be to replace the oxygen in the bottle with another non-reactive gas like Argon. This gas will not react with the wine and therefore will not change the taste profile of the wine. An example of this is the Coravin system. It allows wines to be drank for a few months.

Wine should be enjoyed and appreciated. Never unnecessarily pressure yourself to finish a bottle. You can use the methods described above to store any amount of unfinished wine.

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