quick newbie question

Pour them into splits. Fill them to the tippy top (an inch of ullage or less). Dangle a wire into the neck as you insert the cork (the wire is to provide a path for air to escape as you press the cork in), then pull the wire out.

Jose

I have had very good luck with the Vac-u-vin oxygen extraction pump and stoppers. I do this for all of my opened bottles, and place them on their sides in the regular 'fridge. I have not done a control experiment to measure the exact changes that might take place, but have kept reds for up to a week with no noticeable change in the characteristics of the wine. Whites seem to go a bit more quickly around the house, as there are always two drinkers, and sometimes, I'm the only one doing the reds.

I have several nitrogen purge systems, and have ceased using them, as they do not "seem" to offer better storage, and each has a proceedure, that can get a bit involved.

I need to do a control with each method available to me, just to see if I can detect a difference, but have not done so.

You might want to do a Search on Google.groups (afw) to see some past suggestions and comments, as this is a fairly common question.

FWIW, I travel with a Vac-u-vin and about 4 stoppers, just for this purpose.

Hunt

Thanks for the replies. I'm still not sure which way to go. I kinda liked the nitrogen idea, but always hear the bottles have to be placed upright. I wanna keep them in my cooler though.

I bought those 4 in 1 stoppers that are air tight and filter unwanted debris out of the wine. Would those be ok to keep open wine, lets say for 24 hours?

Maxx,

I'm not familiar with the "4 in 1" stoppers, so I cannot comment on them. For a 24hr period, I'm not sure that there were be all that many benefits to doing other than placing the cork back into the bottle and putting it in the 'fridge. I do the Vac-u-vin thing out of habit. For Stelvin-closure wines, I just screw the top back on, making sure that it is tight, and lay one of the wine racks in my kitchen 'fridge, which is usually ~ 40F. Most of my Stelvin- closure wines have been white and are usually consumed within 24hr's.

One note on the Vac-u-vin stoppers - if you do NOT pump them, they will weep through their one-way valve, when the bottle is placed on its side. They look wine-tight, but you MUST pump them, to close the valve and keep it from leaking.

For short-term storage, I like Jose's comment on usuing smaller bottles. Save a few .375 bottles, especially ones with Stelvin-closures for this purpose. You just have to remember what wine you have poured into them!

Hunt

This group really, really needs some FAQ material. This question has been coming up steadily on the wine newsgroup for more than 20 years. (I could quote.)

BTW many people (especially professionals who also are wine hobbyists) start out with higher-tech methods for sealing the partial bottles at home, but with time they relax to lower-tech methods. 15 or 20 years ago I would have advocated vacu-vin more enthusiastically, and I still carry them in my main car (along with the emergency spit cups, highway flares, tools, extra copy of Stevenson's wine encyclopedia [ISBN 0789480395, that edition anyway] to check little details, etc.). But I've found gradually that the atmosphere or lack of it has less impact than simply a good seal and _refrigeration_ of the stored partial bottle, which, as the chemists and thermodynamicists here can tell you down to the kT/q, slows reactions, including spoilage.

Of course if I wanted to make money at it I could contrive impressive arguments for inert gasses etc. (Don't settle for nitrogen, use Argon. Or Helium: It's noble too, and floats over the wine ...) But practical experience and a few accounts of controlled blind tests with glove boxes persuade me that most of the utility of gas is, as usual, for rhetoric.

-- Max

Ok, so bottomline, once opened, I shouldn't keep my wine in the wine cooler (set at 55 F), but should always put it in the fridge since it's a bit cooler.

Why only short term storage? Seems to me that one can remove virtually =all= the oxygen. You might even be able to put it back in the wine cellar for another five years.

And yes, I've discovered a new use for labels and ink. :)

Jose

Max,

I'd definitely advocate the use of Helium. Imagine trying to listen to some wine geek (like me) wax poetic over the attributes of wonderful 1er Cru Chablis, in a cartoon voice! No way one could pass as a wine-snob if they sounded like Huey, Dewey, or Louie.

As for the FAQ update, I think that this would be a good addition. Someone (St Helier?) posted the link, not too long ago. I do not know who the "keeper" of the FAQ is, but it might be time to cast votes for addenda.

Hunt

I've tried using a half bottle yesterday and I think it works pretty well, I have almost no air in the bottle.

My other two questions that haven't been fully answered: Is it better to keep an opened bottle in the fridge or can I put it back into my wine cooler? If I use nitrogen or some gas to flush out the oxygen, can I place the bottle back into my wine cooler or does it have to be placed upright. I've read this on some instructions for these nitrogen systems.

Thanks everyone

I think it's better in the fridge. I suspect (but have not tested) that if you indeed got all the air out by recorking in a split as I suggested (as opposed to simply shoving the cork in, which would pressurize what air there was, though I don't know if that's important or not, since that's probably what the wineries do), you might be able to put it in your wine cellar on its side for another five years. It would be an interesting test.

I suspect it depends on the gas and the quantity. The point of keeping wine on its side is to keep the cork moist for long term storage. Short term I don't think the cork needs to be moist (wine sits on liquor shelves for a while, upright). Gasses not only displace the oxygen prior to recorking, but settle to the bottom of the ullage where they serve as a shield for what oxygen remains on top. In theory. I suspect however that at non-cryogenic temperatures, there is enough thermal mixing of gasses that this effect is minimal to miniscule.

However, upright there is probably less surface area exposed to the gasses, so any reactions would occur slower, and that is probably why the nitrogen instructions say to do this. Nitrogen is slightly lighter than oxygen, btw. Helium is lots lighter.

Jose

The subject arises periodically (links below), sometimes citing the few-years-old independent HTTP-site FAQ list referred to above (developed out of AFW by Harm Ellens). Some examples of these discussions, currently archived on Google:

Apr 2006

Nov 2004

I say "currently" because the wine newsgroup approaches 25 years old, whereas HTTP addresses come and go. (For 15 of those 25 years, the only _public_ Internet wine forum was the wine newsgroup; history posted earlier.) As net.wines its first message is still Message-ID , you can read it on Google currently at

; being a newsgroup message it didn't "reside" anywhere but was diffused internationally and could be archived by anyone, which is how Google got it much later. Early material was archived by various people and sites. People still read newsgroups who saw net.wines created.

Sorry for the digression but it points to further issues related to FAQ lists.

1. Obviously people come and go. A thread linked above regrets names not seen lately. That's inherent. (Regulars who contributed constructively for more than 10 years, and set the newsgroup's tone, are unknown to regulars who joined in the last 10, for example.)
2. Historically (i.e., before "Web sites"), FAQ lists appeared on newsgroups themselves; some still do. Whether there, or on an independent Web site, someone with consensus support must be willing to maintain an FAQ list. A hard set of requirements to fill.
3. A wine newsgroup has unique features, even if less central to Internet wine discussion than 15 years ago. But if you want to talk about consensus FAQ lists, it might be time to talk also about undoing the major past mis-step, and return the wine newsgroup to its classic name which today would be rec.food.drink.wine . It wasn't called that for the last dozen years because of a temporary reason in the early 1990s which is long, long gone.

Recall that the newsgroup began as net.wines, later rec.food.drink (in the late-1980s newsgroup renaming), which then still carried mostly wine traffic for years. Google's archive happens to be weak for that period but others exist. Longtime plan and momentum was to split to multiple drinks groups over time. Impatience later (by people with limited history in the group, I gather, as usual), when the separation didn't happen _quickly enough,_ led to someone arbitrarily creating a name in the free-for-all "Alt" category. (Actually multiple names, but most of the "alt" wine newsgroups aren't used.) That soon removed any question about separation (and therefore, the reason for the move!) Yet the other modern spin-offs in due course (rec.food.drink.beer, rec.food.drink.coffee, rec.food.drink.tea), all bear the root name of the venerable newsgroup devoted to wine! Do you see how absurd this is? The wine newsgroup began that whole hierarchy. Its long history (not to mention helping new readers to find it, and some returning ones) argues for returning the name itself to its origins.

-- Max Hauser

The cooler the environment, the better. Chemical reactions in all but a few esoteric cases proceed slower at lower temperature.

As long as the seal is tight, you can place the bottle in any orientation you want to. If it leaks, keep it upright.

Mark Lipton