re red plastic caps and how about canning jars?

Wouldn't recommend it. A small-mouth canning jar has a 2.5" diameter opening. A wine bottle has a 3/4" opening. Since area = PI*radius**2, the small mouth jar is exposing 4.91 square inches to air, whereas the wine bottle is only exposing .44 square inches. This means the small mouth jar is exposing 11.11 times the surface are to oxygen.

The reason this is NOT a problem with canning is that you are supposed to boil or steam the sealed jars for 10-30 minutes, which removes all the air from the head space and creates a "vacuum seal". Unless you wish to process your wine similarly (which will have a decidedly negative effect on its flavour), canning jars will not be a very good storage method.

Free wine bottles may be had at recyling centers, from friends and neighbours, and from nearby restaurants and bars. Soak them overnight in a bleach OR ammonia solution, scrape off any labels remaining with a plastic spoon, rinse well, and voila.

Use corks and avoid screw-tops unless you sterile-filter or use sorbate. Otherwise, there is always the chance that the wine will begin to ferment again, and the CO2 created thereby will cause the bottle to explode. If that happens with corked bottles, the cork pops out. You have a potential mess, but not an explosive. [Of course the latter situation could also occur with canning jars as well.]

Another less than adequate solution is to use empty plastic pop bottles with _their_ screw-caps. Exploding plastic isn't as dangerous as exploding glass, but the plastic actually allows some seepage of oxygen into the container, and may or may not affect the flavour of the wine.

Bottles and corks are the best (and cheapest) way to go in the long run.

I'm not an expert on it, but just a thought.... Does the wine react with the airspace up to a point where the air is finally saturated, or all the bad things have been taken out of it by the wine? If so, then the surface area exposed to the wine isn't as important as the VOLUME of air. A canning jar filled close to the brim may have the same volume of air as a bottle. The air will "saturate" faster in the canning jar than in the bottle due to the increased surface area. Is that a logical assumption?

What you say sounds logical, yet I've always read that the important factor is the surface area. Perhaps oxidation can only take place on the surface, and perhaps the rate of oxidation is slow enough that the difference is still significant.

On the other hand, we are also told to "top up" our carboys and bottles, implying that air VOLUME is also significant.

Regardless, unless you top up the canning jar to the very brim, you will probably have a greater VOLUME of air in the wider mouth than in the wine bottle! You can do a little basic geometry to verify this:

AREA = 3.14 x RADIUS**2. VOLUME = AREA x HEIGHT = 3.14 x RADIUS**2 x HEIGHT.

Assume we have a wine bottle with a 3/4" neck, and 1/2" of headroom. The volume of air in the bottle is 3.14 x (.75 / 2)**2 x .5 = .22 cubic inches.

Now, assume we have a "narrow-mouth" jar with a 2.5" opening, and 1/2" of headroom. The volume of air in the bottle is 3.14 x (2.5/2)**2 x .5 = 2.45 cubic inches (which is 11.16 times the volume of air in the wine bottle).

Even if you were to top up the "narrow-mouth" jar to 1/8", you will still have a volume of air of .61 cubic inches (almost 3 times that of the wine bottle)

Also, note that 2.5" is the diameter of of the mouth, but the jar quickly becomes over 3" wide, as there is virtually no "bottleneck". Conversely, a wine bottle remains 3/4" diameter for several inches depth.

Now, why not top it up all the way, and eliminate any air in the jar? There are several reasons.

1) "It ain't so easy" to fill a jar to the brim. Surface tension and other properties of liquid make it almost impossible. Try it, and you will see what I mean. As you fill it, liquid will spill out, and you will be left with a lower liquid level than when you began. 2) You don't want the wine to come into contact with the metal lid. It will corrode rapidly, and the contact with the metal will probably make your wine taste like it had been stored in a metal vessel. 3) Both air and liquid expand and contract with change in temperature, but air compresses and liquid does not (at least significantly)!

If you top it up all the way, and the temperature increases, hydraulic pressure from the expanding liquid will either force the cork out of the bottle (another good reason to use corks rather than screwtops) or the bottle will burst!

If there is sufficient airspace, the air will contract, and your cork will remain in place, and you won't have broken glass and wine all over the room.

[BTW, I prefer synthetic to "real" corks for this reason. Since synthetics do not have to be kept moist to maintain the seal, the bottles can be stored upright. If the room temperature increases significantly (e.g. because the refrigeration failed on the hottest day of the year), the cork will pop, but you won't have wine all over the floor.]

There are good reasons for the classical methods of doing things. We can sometimes improve on them, but we should try to understand the reasons "its always been done that way". The ancients learned by trial and error, so we don't have to.

I'm picturing trying to pour a deep red CabSauv out of a full Mason jar while over a white table cloth at the dinner table.... LOL!