A question about an open bottle of wine

I have often read here that once a bottle of a typical red wine is opened it's just a matter of time, days at the most, before it is no longer worth drinking. Is this true even if little wine is removed from the bottle, say one 4 oz glass? I very rarely have open bottles around but after a recent tasting I was given my choice of any opened wines to take home, which I did with 6 or 7 wines. The corks are back in and they are in the fridge. One of my selection criteria was the fill level - was this a waste of time?

As always, it depends. On the wine, vintage, etc.

What were the wines?

Not a waste of time, Jon. Try them and see -- the cost was right!

Bigger wines -- cabs and Shiraz -- tend to last longer. Sweeter whites last longer. Lighter wines -- CdR, Pinot Noir -- tend to not last as long. But it's always fun to try and see.

Regards, Bob

buy a bag of cheap marbles and drop them in each bottle until the fill level is high enough that there is little or no room for air.

Great idea, creightond. Thanks. I'd forgotten that trick.

I'd guess fill-level per se is not so important. But a bottle that is almost empty due to normal usage will have already absorbed a lot of oxygen through sloshing around the bottle during pouring multiple glasses. Once absorbed, it is just a question of time until you get oxidised wine. A bottle with a high fill-level probably (unless it contains consolidated dregs, or has been double decanted) has not gone through the sloshing ordeal.

buy a bag of cheap marbles and drop them in each bottle until the fill level is high enough that there is little or no room for air.

Now that you mention it, I haven't seen marbles for sale any place in over fifty years. Where do you buy marbles? If you were feeling flush, where would you go to buy expensive marbles?

Now that you mention it, I haven't seen marbles for sale any place in over fifty years. Where do you buy marbles? If you were feeling flush, where would you go to buy expensive marbles?

The Parthenon used to have nice ones. Elgin might be selling some on ebay.

Covert....expensive Bordeaux requires more expensive marbles...anyone knows that! Try you favorite fish/pet store heck any large store such as Wal-Mart will have them, people often put them in fish tanks. If they don't have marbles, they will have small glass disks that fill the same need.

Where do you buy marbles? If you were feeling flush, where would you go to buy expensive marbles?

Why don't you run around the corner to the Five and Dime?

Thank you all for your feedback/ideas. My wife Liz says marbles can be found at craft stores. (Last night's open bottle, opened on Saturday, was not simply because it had been opened, I just didn't really like the wine - a Santa Barbara Syrah from Kinton Vineyards.)
I had marbles as a kid, but now, as Liz says, I've lost my marbles so here's a chance to get some back.

Jon, I am probably beating a dead horse with this, but here it is anyway. When I have wine left over for more than a day or three I freeze it. I sometimes notice a barely perceptible loss of acid (tartrates) (mostly in whites) but fruit and tannin are unchanged. I have done this for as long as 6 months, perhaps longer, and drank the wine which was still fresh on the nose and in the mouth.

David is right on; just be sure to boil the marbles first.

Cheers, Carl

Maybe we drink too much wine, but having leftover half-full bottles never seems to be a problem at our house.

Maybe we drink too much wine, but having leftover half-full bottles never seems to be a problem at our house.

I agree Ray, but that 2nd bottle?

Maybe we drink too much wine, but having leftover half-full bottles never seems to be a problem at our house.

I agree Ray, but that 2nd bottle?

The remainder of the 2nd bottle becomes the starter for the next day.

We use Vacuvin stoppers on the whites, and refrigerate them. For the reds, we recork and leave at room temperature or put them back in the cellar. It's rare that we don't have a half bottle somewhere. The reds can really taste different the next day - usually better.

The idea of freezing them or putting marbles in them seems so much more complicated than just drinking them...

The idea of freezing them or putting marbles in them seems so much more complicated than just drinking them...

You are right Ray, but if it is going to be 3 or more days sometime, try freezing and let me know what you think. Maybe a bottle you open just before leaving on vacation or some such.

I know there's disagreement on this score, Jon, but I believe the Vacuvin pump and stoppers prolong a wine's resistance to oxidation.

Clinton, I, like you, think that the Vacu-Vin does in fact help me to preserve a wine for a day or a little more. I use them frequently. I even use one on bottles I freeze because I get a tighter closure than with the cork inverted and reinserted. Maybe I am a heretic, I even think that Parker has a legitimate place in this wine world we know.

With this topic in mind, I went to a popular bar here in DC – Clyde’s in Chinatown - and noted that there were many opened bottles sitting on a shelf that they used for their by-the-glass wine list. They’d all been re-corked (corks sticking halfway out) and had various fill levels but they were just sitting there at room temps. I took the opportunity to ask the bartender how long they keep the wine. The bartender said, and I can't believe this, he would never keep an open bottle more than seven (7) days!
A new wine bar - Proof – less than a block away, is quite the opposite: they use an inert gas preservation system; you all know the one where the gas is introduced under pressure and pushes the wine out, thus replacing the wine.
I'll never get a wine by the glass at Clyde’s - ever.

I have often read here that once a bottle of a typical red wine is opened it's just a matter of time, days at the most, before it is no longer worth drinking. Is this true even if little wine is removed from the bottle, say one 4 oz glass? I very rarely have open bottles around but after a recent tasting I was given my choice of any opened wines to take home, which I did with 6 or 7 wines. The corks are back in and they are in the fridge. One of my selection criteria was the fill level - was this a waste of time?

A great red wine should be able to go upwards of two WEEKS before it begins to show signs of oxidation.

In fact, as a rule of thumb, the number of days it takes for a wine to oxidize is a very good indicator of the quality of the wine.

I.e., in general, you don't want to be purchasing [or cellaring] wines which die within a few hours of opening.

[A great champagne may lose its bubbles within a few hours, but, as a still wine, it should continue to impress for days and days on end.]

[Robin Garr]

A great red wine should be able to go upwards of two WEEKS before it begins to show signs of oxidation.

I want to put this as nicely as I can, and I respect your right to your own tastes, but I can't let this one stand out in public without observing that very, very few wine enthusiasts would agree with this.

Two <i>days</i>, sure. But I would never recommend hanging on to red wine in an opened bottle for one week, much less two, irrespective of the wine's quality.

[David M. Bueker]

The only time I was ever able to hold a bottle of red wine for 5 days was when it was a newly released Bordeaux from a vintage with plenty of tannin, and I kept the bottle in the wine cellar the whole time so it was nice and cool.

As for the Champagne - some great Champagnes taste very good as still wines, other great Champagnes do not. Flat Salon is the best "White Burg" in the world IMO, but I have never, ever liked what happens to Krug when it goes flat.

Just my experiences.

I'm also not generally in the camp that German Riesling can truly hold for weeks in the fridge. I've seen it work, but it's definitely the exception rather than the rule for me.

A great red wine should be able to go upwards of two WEEKS before it begins to show signs of oxidation.

I want to put this as nicely as I can, and I respect your right to your own tastes, but I can't let this one stand out in public without observing that very, very few wine enthusiasts would agree with this.

Two <i>days</i>, sure. But I would never recommend hanging on to red wine in an opened bottle for one week, much less two, irrespective of the wine's quality.

That's because very, very few wine enthusiasts have taken the time to study the matter.

Which gets back to a point I've been trying to make to people for quite a while now: You can't understand a wine within the context of tasting 119 other wines over the course of four hours.

I.e. many of these mass tastings of wines [as performed most notably by the professional critics] provide data points which are essentially meaningless in nature.

You need to spend days and days with a bottle of wine to learn its subtleties and nuances.