more wine questions
 

Once I open a bottle of wine, how should I store it?
Once the bottle of wine is open, how long will it be good?

I have the wine I used on Tuesday for cooking, and I'm pondering having a glass tonight. Is it still good?

I guess the obvious question would be -- how does it taste? You're the judge. ;) It's going to be a little oxidized and the flavor will be a little flat, but there's no way that it's "gone bad".

I didn't know if at some point, it would spoil or taste stale. I'm new to wine. :)

It gradually will, though it won't suddenly spoil the way, say, a carton of milk does.

The fuller the bottle & colder it's kept - the longer it'll last. Buy some wine in 1/2 bottles (.375) & keep the bottles. You want 2 glasses ? Fill up the 375 & put it in the fridge. It'll last weeks at least. Pour in boiling water & let it sit for awhile between uses. Wine can also be frozen to stop the oxidization. If a wine is not going to be consumed, I'll freeze it and use it for cooking, whenever. I've even pulled wine out of the bottom of the freezer that had been there for years & it was still quite palatable. wj

rule of thumb, the lighter the wine, the sooner it fades. Rutherglen makes some wonderful heavy sweet wines(not expensive either). one of them will last a month without decay. some huge ugly reds are actually better the second or third day. most delicate whites lose that delicacy even after 4-6 hrs, and just become tasteless.

if you take a big red, fill it to the top with more big red, then pound a cork back into it, it will keep right on going. a couple of the bordeaux firsts have a "recorking" program. they put a younger but similar wine in as they recork. and as i said, they fill to leave little or no air.

My answer on this would be 'it depends'. Red wines handle about 4-5 times the amount of oxygen as a white wine before spoiling. Actually, many red wines improve with a little oxidation as one poster mentioned. Keeping things cool will help prevent spoilage as well.

Another factor is how much is left in the bottle? If there's half a glass left in the bottom and the rest is filled with air then it'll oxidize pretty quickly, whereas if the bottle was mostly full you're in good shape. You can drink a glass and put a bottle of red back in the fridge for a week and when you try it again it will still be good.

If you want something that you can just grab a glass once a night and it will stay good I'd highly encourage you to investigate some of the premium box wine options. And yes, that's not as much of an oxymoron as it used to be. Box wine will stay good for weeks or months because the collapsible bag keeps the wine tightly sealed from oxygen.

-TK

How to store to lengthen shelf life: a) use a stopper system like Vacuvin (cheap), or b) use nitrogen gas (expensive but works for weeks with most wines, it is used by most wine bars), or c) use a rare gas displacement system (very expensive, circa $10/bottle but the best and worth it for sufficiently expensive wines.

Shelf life: varies with the type of wine, fortified wines such as port, sherry and madeira can last for months without any help, heavy red wines can last a week and even improve, while some white wines last a few hours, less than a day. And then there are the wines where you can't tell :)

Note that even bad wine is "still good" in the food safety sense ... there is no danger from any pathogens developing. At worst it tastes terrible (I suppose becoming vinegar is the worst case), at best it tastes the same and for some wines actually better.

I use a can of nitrogen/argon. Two squirts into the bottle, then put the cork back in. The argon is heavier than air and so settles on the top of the wine surface in the bottle. It will keep an opened bottle nearly as good as if it were freshly opened for a week or so. And it's not expensive - a can with about 50 uses is about $10.

In general, what people have said above is correct so I won't repeat it. And do check out the boxed wine - a box of decent wine costs about $20-25, contains the equivalent of 4 bottles, and stays good for up to a couple months after it's opened. I generally keep a box in the fridge for when I want a glass of wine but don't want to deal with the commitment of opening a bottle. :)

If you're just getting into wine, remember to completely ignore what wine snobs say. Yes, wine has that level of complexity if you're that in to it, but a few hundred million Europeans just drink it and don't make a fuss over it. Explore and taste, then taste more with your favorite foods and see how the flavors change. It's a difficult thing to do, but someone's gotta do it. :)

I might sound spoilt but I'd never drink a wine which has been opened more than 4-5 days before.

Being italian we probably have a different approach to wine, but even in the wine bars in Italy a bottle won't be drunk after 4-5 days no matter what technological sealing you can use..

And please don't put red wine into a fridge... ;-)

"And please don't put red wine into a fridge... ;-)" Nonsense ! That's an old myth. Is a cellar warm or cold ? If you chill down some Pinot Noir, does it ruin it ? I store about 20 cases in my garage in old fridges kept at 55. It's worked fabulously for 20 years. Wine does not like repeated temp change during storage. I own a Bar-Restaurant and we go through a ton of wine. It's all properly stored now, but in our old property, the cellar was quite warm. Unfortunately it was the only place we could keep it. It was always hot, 24/7/365 due to the refrigeration not being vented properly. The wines were fine and continue to be 15 -20 years later. They seem to mature more quickly though. wj

It's not nonsense at all!

I'm talking about "fridge", a normal fridge is around 40, and that's never gonna make any good to any red wine.

Of course a chiller or a wine cellar around 55/65 it's perfect, that's what wine cellars are for!

It's totally a personal choice, and depends on the wine. Some wines will be fine the next day, some even better, some will taste like paint thinner.

Like everything else wine, it's clearly a matter of personal taste. If it still tastes good to you, then it's still good.

If it doesn't taste good, it's time to return it to it's cooking duties.

Don't let anybody tell you any different, if you taste it and you think it's still good, it's still good.

Gotta disagree again. Anything that slows down oxidization is good IMO. I put red wine in the fridge all the time and find no drop off. Of course you need to let it get back up to 65-70 or it'll not show much. Even your fellow Italian's Ecco Domani recommend it: "Once opened, white and red wine can be stored for 2-3 days in the refrigerator ". wj

Can be stored for 2/3 days doesn't mean that it's good to keep wine in the fridge.. And it depends on the wine.

We produce wines and all the high end bottles of red wine are never going to be stored at less than 55, not even during the oversea shipping. Whether they travel by ship or by plane they are always inside temperature controlled cases.

Of course a 10$ wine is not going to be compromised by a fridge...