What Should You Do With Leftover Wine?

What Should You Do With Leftover Wine?

Calling all thirsty readers of ours! We have a wine hack that we think will help you handle an (admittedly rare) issue that many wine drinkers don’t know how to handle. Let’s talk about leftover wine, and what to do with it.

If you’re thinking:” you drink it, obviously” that is perfectly reasonable. After all, who wants to waste a good bottle of vino? The reason I bring this issue to your attention is not so much the use of the leftover wine, but the storage.

Where do you keep leftover red wine?

While I traditionally have white wine in the fridge, open bottles of red wine are typically left on our kitchen counter where they stay until the next night when I finish them off. Or the end of the next week when I remember they exist and toss them (so sad).

Recently, Wine Enthusiast made a suggestion I had somehow never considered: store that open red wine in the fridge.

According to Wine Enthusiast, the cool temperature of your fridge can’t stop the wine from breaking down, but it can help slow down the process; giving you a bit longer to drink it at its best.

Unconvinced, I did a little more research and it’s a recommendation made by many other wine experts as well. Wine Folly says that oxidation will happen at a slower pace if you keep that wine in the fridge.

If you find yourself frequently storing half-consumed bottles, Wine Folly also suggests springing for a vacuum pump that will suck all the air out of the bottle when you recork it.

If you don’t have a vacuum pump, Wine Enthusiast suggests funnelling your remaining wine into a bottle with a screw cap so you can get a good seal on it, preventing more oxygen from coming in through that open cork while it’s being stored.

And unlike before it was open, avoid storing that open wine bottle on its side. You’ll expose more of the wine to oxygen that way, and accidentally make your wine taste worse, not better.

Here’s hoping this hack helps you in your wine-drinking endeavours going forward. Enjoy!

Oh, and if you want to know how long wine lasts after a bottle has been opened, we’ve looked into that for you too, here.

This article has been updated since its original publication.

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