Have you ever noticed that white wine lasts a bit better than red wine?  It’s partly due to the acidity of white wine.  The acidity helps to preserve it’s original composition and freshness.  The process by which white wine is fermented (cold fermentation) also helps to preserve the wine after it’s been opened.

On the other hand, it’s the tannins in the red wine that aids in preservation.  A wine with a high tannins will last longer on the shelf than a wine lower in tannins.   Just as a note, the amount of tannins do affect the taste.

Other factors such as oxygenation, fluctuation in temperatures, grape variety, and location where the grape is grown are all factors.

We order the wine for our clients – when they are purchasing their own.  There have been many a day that we have loaded the car with a few bottles of opened wine.  What do you do with those bottles?  Pour them out?  Put them in the refrigerator – and hope they are decent when you want to drink them?

Get a  sucking devices, and a few stoppers for your bottles.  Re-corking the wine, or just putting a stopper in – is not enough.  You have to suck out the air to inhibit oxygenation – which is THE destroyer.  Look for screwpull plastic or metal wine pumps with stoppers.

They can range in price between $10.00-$40.00 on Amazon.com or Williams Sonoma.

Alternatively, if you have enough wine left over, you can reuse empty Perrier bottles.  Fill the bottles all the way to the top and cap tightly.  Voila!

What do you do to preserved the wine after it’s been opened?

Happy planning!

Tags: Libations, Random Musings

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 at 5:00 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.