1. Home
  2. General Wine Forum
  3. Storage note - rebottling in half bottles

Storage note - rebottling in half bottles

I opened a Gewurtz that I had recorked in a half-bottle some months back and left in the frige - this is the longest I've stored open wine before. As far as I can tell, very little (if anything) was lost over that time period. What upon first opening I sensed on the nose (I had no strong impressions of the palate), when I reopened it I sensed most of it on the palate instead.

I'm certain that wine that was stored for this long in a half full full bottle would be dead. So, I believe that by far the best way to preserve leftover wine is to rebottle it in a smaller bottle, with almost no ullage, and to insert a paperclip while inserting the cork (to allow air to escape), then pull the paperclip and push the cork in a bit more (to get past the slot). There should be less than half an inch of ullage.

Far superior than any other storage method I've used.

Jose

Reply to
Jose
Loading thread data ...

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.

Reply to
cwdjrxyz

DrinksForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.