Storage note - rebottling in half bottles

In the past I recorked a bottle or two that was beginning to leak slightly. To fill up the bottle before inserting the new cork, a few clean glass beads or marbles can be added to the bottle if you have no wine to top it up. However, these days, I inspect the bottles about once a year. For any that show the slightest indication of leakage or lowered level compared with other bottles of like wine, I remove the capsule, very well clean the top of the glass and neck, and dip the top of the neck of the inverted bottle into melted USP bee's wax to build up a wax seal. This works very well to seal the bottle, but since the wax is soft and has a very low melting point, this technique is suited only for bottles that will remain in a fairly cool cellar. I would not want to depend on such a wax seal if I shipped the wine. Of course you could use sealing wax if you wanted a wax seal to withstand higher temperatures and rough shipping.

Adding the glass beads or marbles might be of some use when you want to bottle some unused wine and available bottles are a bit too large. Of course the best thing to do, if you know you want to save some wine, likely is to carefully transfer it in a new bottle and seal it as soon as possible.

I agree that the smaller bottle method is the best way (other than maybe heavy gas) to store wines. Especially if you know in advance you want to save half a bottle (or a tiny bit more). I need to get more of those 187 ml airline bottles- gives one even more options for storage, and the screwcap is easy.