On a recent long weekend of wine tasting from Santa Cruz and Sonoma [California, USA ;o)] I made a point of asking tasting room staff what method they use to store opened bottles overnight. Prior to that trip I had concluded that VacuVin + refrigeration was the best thing to do for short-term storage. I'm pretty sure that, after re-bottling in smaller format, it was VacuVin that got the nod here most often. The overwhelming choice of the tasting rooms, however, was Private Preserve (or similar heavy gas system).
First off, "Private Reserve" is not a "heavy" gas. It's nitrogen, which is slightly lighter than air. When you first squirt it out of the can it _may_ be slightly heavier than air due to the temperature drop from adiabatic expansion, but it's not nominally heavier than air.
Secondly, although PR is capable of doing a very acceptable job of protecting an opened bottle of wine by purging air/oxygen from the headspace of the bottle, most applications of this product that I've witnessed are woefully inadequate. It takes a really _long_ squirt of gas to completely displace all the oxygen from an opened bottle - especially if there's appreciable headspace. Most folks I've seen give it a ~3 second squirt of gas (the stuff's expen$ive after all!) and call that good. Well, it usually isn't.
If inert gas is your thing, go buy a small (~50 cu. ft.) high pressure cylinder of Argon, a regulator and a piece of rubber hose to direct the gas. You can purge a _lot_ of bottles with that, and refills aren't nearly as costly as equivalent volume of Private Reserve. This setup has other uses as well. You can purge your Cuisinart before blenderizing a batch of pesto and it'll help retard the browning.
I've used a Vac-U-Vin over the years, and AFAIC it's a reasonably good alternative for short term storage. My tests confirm that used properly, a Vac-U-Vin is capable of removing ~90% of the oxygen from an opened bottle of _any_ size. That, plus refrigerated storage, is good for several days to a week or more with little if any degradation of quality of the wine. Delicate whites may not fare so well, but big reds can actually benefit by the treatment.
The *best* way of protecting opened bottles of wine is to decant the excess wine immediately (without splashing) into small, screw-capped bottles that you can fill brim-full and seal tightly. Wine stored thusly will keep for months - maybe even years - with no need for refrigeration. Cellar temperature is just fine.
in article f6EFe.881$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com, Tom S at snipped-for-privacy@dontspampacbell.net wrote on 7/26/05 9:31 PM:
Thanks for all that, Tom. As I said in my post, I do know that the most preferred method extolled here is re-filling smaller bottles. What I find problematic about that is what to do if the amount left from a 750ml is much more or less than 375ml (or whatever the size of the smaller bottle).
I personally use and prefer the VacuVin myself, but thought that people working every day in a winery tasting room might know more than I do about it. Maybe they find Private Preserve OK because they really never keep the wine longer than overnight. On the technical point of the gas itself...... I just assumed whatever gas they use was 'heavier than air' because I couldn't think of any other way it would stay in a bottle long enough to get the closure in on top of it. When I read the instructions on the can it seemed as if one releases the gas in through the open top and seals it after..... though I still don't know how one could be sure the amount of gas used is enough. If you're referring to what I guess would be the scientific definition of a 'heavy' gas, you're way over my head.
I would think a better way would be to use a bladder type device with tube, as used in box wines. Evacuate it completely, then put the wine into the bladder by putting the bladder into a container and evacuating the container. That environment should have very little residual Oxygen.
For really good bottles I put Private Preserve in the bottle and the use a VacuVin sealer. What gas that is left after the VacuVin vacuum is nitrogen. In the debate over which is better, use both. I have always been a "belt and braces" kind of guy.
I'm curious about that 90% figure. I once tied up an empty balloon and stuffed it into an empty bottle and Vac-U-Vined. I wasn't able to expand the balloon to more than about an inch in diameter. I had expected it to expand far more. My guess is that V-U-V works more by lessening the vapor pressure on the wine, rather than by actually removing 02.
VacuVin removes air, thus reducing pressure. Air is about 30% Oxygen.
I pumped an empty bottle and then opened the seal underwater to see how much water would enter. IIRC it was something like half full when done (depends on how many pumps), which tells me that it lowers the pressure by about 50% (and thus removes half the oxygen).
I did that same, exact test - but I made sure that the Vac-U-Vin seals were greased (silicone) and wet first. I also pumped it quite vigorously until it felt like there was nothing else coming out of the bottle. My volumetric measurement showed that I had removed ~90% of the air. Of course the limit is the vapor pressure of the alcohol/water mixture that wine is - on the order of 30-50 mm of mercury I'd guess. Getting it down to ~75 mm with a crude, single stage, hand-operated platic pump isn't too bad though.
My experience with Cruvinet has been mixed. Theoretically, it's an ideal concept - but there are a couple of problems.
For one thing, when a new bottle is mounted it is very important that the air in the neck of the bottle be completely purged with a blast of inert gas from the tank. If one simply slips a new bottle into place and seats the cork/siphon assembly there remains a small but significant amount of oxygen in the bottle. If that bottle isn't emptied relatively quickly the wine will begin to become degraded by microbiological organisms.
Another issue - and perhaps an even more significant one - is the small amount of holdup of wine on the _air_ side of the dispensing spigot. If the wine is one that doesn't get requested very frequently (usually because it's expensive!) that small amount of wine will spoil very quickly, as it has an infinite air supply and presents a very favorable aspect ratio. Unless the spoiled wine is first flushed out with a small volume of wine and dumped (a practice that wine bar owners are _very_ reluctant to do, especially with an expensive bottle) that spoiled wine will go into the next glass poured from the spigot, thereby ruining it. I've had this happen to me several times at a local wine bar. I have always complained, and tried to explain my reasoning, but they don't seem to "get" it and are reluctant to replace the bad glass (although they finally did) - so I've taken to avoiding the place entirely. I don't have the patience to retrain their staff every time I want a taste of wine.
Some seem to think that vacuvin removes some aromas from the wine and do not use it for that reason.
An argument for not simply decanting remains into a smaller bottle is that the oxygen is already in the wine after it has been open for a while and sloshed around a bit by pouring. The additional decanting will add more oxygen. And that the oxgen already dissolved is more important that the oxygen in the head space. This dissolved oxygen will then oxidise the wine irrespective of the headspace. Thus you should make some attempt to reduce the partial pressure of oxygen in the winw, which will actually remove some disoilved oxygen before it does its damage.
Personally, I vacuvin. I may also refrigerate if it is a white wine or a red wine I want to keep for more than a day. If I could be bothered I also pour into a smaller bottle.
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