Culinary Attempts

I was once shamed for having a leftover bottle of wine in my fridge. “That’s gross”, he said. Uh, rude!

He was right though. I had naively thought that wine kept forever. You know, like liquor. It in fact did not taste good. But for someone who hasn’t gotten into wine, it’s not obvious that it’ll change over time because it’s interacting with ~air~. Like what is that.

Turns out, it’s oxidation

The chemical process that’s actually happening is called redox. Oxidation is one part of it; we hear about it the most because that’s the reaction happening to the wine. The other part of the reaction is called reduction. Redox just means that two substances are exchanging electrons with one another. The substance that loses electrons is called the reductant; it’s the one which is oxidized. The one that gains electrons is called the oxidant and is reduced.

In the case of wine, the oxidant is oxygen. It interacts with different compounds in the wine which is gradually oxidized. The look, taste and feel of the wine changes as this occurs. But I paid for professional wine, so I don’t want these negative vibes messing with the taste. How can I prevent this?

Unsatisfying solutions

The obvious fix is to forgo preservation and just drink the whole bottle. But if you do that, chances are you’re gonna have a bad time. There’s also the option to share it with friends. Except, sometimes I just want a glass without having to deal with human logistics. So what are the other options?

While many products make claims about preserving wine, I doubt their efficacy. Take a wine stopper for instance. It only replaces the bottle’s cork which, after opening, has usually expanded to the point where it no longer fits. But it does nothing about the air present within the bottle. Don’t get me wrong, I have a wine stopper. It’s fine. My problem is with the ones that claim they’ll preserve the wine longer than if you use plastic wrap or anything else.

What about vacuum pumps? Some claim they remove the oxygen from the bottle and re-seal it. Now, I’ve personally never tested them. I’m sure it’s possible to create an air tight seal and maybe they can take out some of the oxygen. But I doubt it’s a significant enough amount to make a difference. Creating a vacuum requires intense pressure, and usually requires a specialized pump. Safety precautions should be taken. I’ve yet to see a flimsy $15 pump suggest you wear protective goggles.

What about wine preservation systems, the ones that actually replace the air within the bottle with an inert gas. At least these tools do something about the air. How noble of them. But my guy, I’m talking about preserving wine bottles in the price range of $10-$25 every once in a while. I’m not finna spend over $200, plus the cost of argon capsules. And you definitely won’t find me trying to finagle with needles and gas capsules just to have a drink.

These tools are a joke. Have you ever seen someone bring out one of those portable wine preservation systems? It looks absolutely ridiculous. I’ve literally seen people drink the remaining wine less than 24 hours later. I’m all for tools, but please, they literally sell wine prophylactics. LMAO. Other than the inappropriate relative getting this as a gag gift whether you like it or not, I don’t see the point. As for the sophisticated equipment, the only place where it seems reasonable to use them is somewhere like a luxury hotel or restaurant that offer wine by the glass to their patrons. At someone’s house? C’man.

My outrage is perhaps unreasonable. Yet there’s something about spending energy and resources on things that don’t actually work that irks me. I mean, I understand why someone might buy these. The problem of preserving an opened bottle exists. And no matter how absurd I think these things are, they’re still attempts at solving the oxidation problem. For my personal use case, I came up with another solution.

The hack

Fill a smaller bottle with wine, then seal it. Drink the rest. That’s it. That’s the hack.

When you pour wine into a smaller bottle, the liquid displaces the air out. You then just have to seal it well. How well? My strategy is to use “the bottle is upside down and it’s not leaking” test. I found that using bar top corks from old liquor bottles works great for this. As for which bottles I use, I just got a couple of 200ml, and 250ml bottles from the liquor store. I made sure to get opaque ones because light also affects wine.

The experiment

If you’re wondering how well this works, I’ll describe my experiment. Note that I am not a wine connoisseur. If a certain variety is supposed to have specific characteristics or flavors, I doubt I’d be able to discern it. However, I’ve drunk enough wine to know what I like, and know if it tastes enjoyable to me. So that’s my bar. Someone with a more refined palate might be able to distinguish faults in the wine after using this method, but that’s for them to test out.

My experiment consisted of purchasing 4 bottles of the same red wine (one I had previously enjoyed) and having a double-blind, side by side tasting with a few friends. Three of the bottles were opened at different times, and kept with the preservation method I described for one, three, and six months. The fourth bottle was opened on the day of tasting. The results? While each sample had a slight difference in taste, and we had different preferences, we all agreed we’d be happy to drink any of them.

Unless more wineries start selling six-packs of wine at reasonable prices (someone please steal this idea!), I’ll be keeping my opened bottles this way. I invite you to try this method and see how you like it. At least for me, it’s made the occasional weeknight cooking session a little more delicious.