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Four
Ways to Keep an Opened Bottle of Wine
Often
you will find you have the last part of a good bottle of wine
left over at the end of dinner.
The question is: how long can you keep it?
Here are
some rules of thumb:
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Full-bodied
wines last longer in the open bottle than more
delicate
styles. |
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For
example, the Killerby Shiraz will last longer in an open
bottle than the Sauvignon Blanc. |
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Well
balanced wines of great quality last for longer than
lesser wines. |
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Red
wines that have intense flavours and a tight structure
are often quite good the next day. |
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This
also indicates that such a wine would be a good
cellaring proposition. |
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As
a guide, 24 hours is about the maximum that we would
keep a wine open at the winery. |
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Write
the day and date that you opened the bottle on the back
of the label so that you don’t forget. |
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Best Options
1.
Refrigerate
Put the cork back in the bottle
(or put the Stelvin seal back on) and place the bottle
upright in the refrigerator.
This slows the rate of oxidation of the wine. If
it is a white wine, just take it out of the refrigerator
and serve. If
it is a red wine, let the wine warm up to about 18
degrees C before serving. This often works surprisingly
well. |
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| 2.
Rebottle in a 375ml Bottle
Pour the remaining contents into a
clean 375 ml wine bottle and put a clean cork in (or
Stelvin cap). Then refrigerate the bottle. This method
is better than option (1) because there is less air in
the bottle and therefore there will be less oxidation. |
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| 3.
Insert Inert Gas into the Bottle
There are several commercial inert
gas devices that displace the oxygen in the bottle.
Many restaurants and some wineries use this
system. This system is a little hit and miss as it is
hard to tell when all the colourless oxygen has been
replaced by the colourless gas.
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| 4.
Use a Vacu-Vin or Similar
Use
a device consisting of a rubber seal and hand held
vacuum pump to draw out the oxygen in the bottle, then
put the wine in the refrigerator.
These
devices are thought to take out about two-thirds of the
air in the bottle.
So there is still a third of a bottle of air in
the wine, so it is not foolproof.
It is also thought that these devices take out
some of the wine’s carbon dioxide which
contributes to the mouth feel of unwooded whites. |
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In summary, don’t forget to
write the date (and even the time) that you opened the
wine, and drink the wine at most 24 hours later.
After a while, you will be able to tell which
wines need to be consumed in less than 24 hours. |
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| In our
experience, the following Killerby wines, when simply
resealed and placed in the refrigerator, will last as
follows: |
| April Classic White: |
24 hours |
| Semillon: |
24 hours |
| Semillon Sauvignon
Blanc: |
18 hours |
| Sauvignon Blanc: |
12 hours |
| April Classic Red: |
18 hours |
| Shiraz: |
24 hours |
| Cabernet
Sauvignon: |
24
hours |
Post Script
This email was received from Cellar Club member Allen Breen
from Sylvania, NSW:
"I don't agree with your storage method for an opened
bottle of wine. My solution is to consume the entire
contents and then stare in wonderment at the empty bottle whilst
considering the option of opening another. It works every
time for me."
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