I was interested in discussion about how to open a bottle of wine,
drink a bit, and then save the remaining portion to fight another day.
The general idea was to pour it into a smaller bottle to reduce the
amount of O2 that comes into contact with it. The obvious smaller
bottle to use was a wine half-bottle.

But oddly enough, wine half-bottles really aren't ideal for this
purpose. If the amount of wine remaining is less than a half-bottle,
there are O2 problems again, and it's difficult to pour from a full
bottle of wine into a half-bottle without a funnel of some kind.

Plastic 1/3 liter water bottles are almost perfect: they're a good
size, they have a wider mouth for easier pouring, and they have a
tight-fitting cap. The only problem with plastic water bottles is,
well...that they're plastic. They're subject to cracking and the wine
will eventually discolor the bottle.

My current experiment seems to be working well. I'm using the bottles
from the Starbucks coffee drink Frappuccino that's available in
grocery stores. It's a glass bottle, 281 ml, with a wide mouth, and a
tight fitting cork. Buy a 4-pack (I recommend the Hazelnut), save the
empty bottles, run them through the dishwasher a few times to get rid
of the coffee ghosts, and they're perfect for overnight wine storage.

A useful technique involving this is to save the small bottles first
rather than last. If you'd like to have a single glass of wine at
midnight, open a bottle, immediately fill two small bottles, and then
drink the rest. In other words, save the beginning of the bottle
rather than the end. I haven't yet tried storing one of the little
bottles for any substantial period of time, but for one or two days, I
can't tell the difference between the original bottle of wine and the
stored bottle.

It's just like soda. Technically as you drink your 2-liter bottle, you'd
like the bottle to shrink along with the volume of soda remaining. If it
did, the amount of escaping gas required to maintain equilibrium would be
minimal. Similarly, with wine you'd like to minimize the amount of O2
available to react.

I'd prefer to dispose of all of this as nonsense, as it threatens my need to
drink my bottle of wine when I open it...




"Kent Feiler" > wrote in message
...
> I was interested in discussion about how to open a bottle of wine,
> drink a bit, and then save the remaining portion to fight another day.
> The general idea was to pour it into a smaller bottle to reduce the
> amount of O2 that comes into contact with it. The obvious smaller
> bottle to use was a wine half-bottle.
>
> But oddly enough, wine half-bottles really aren't ideal for this
> purpose. If the amount of wine remaining is less than a half-bottle,
> there are O2 problems again, and it's difficult to pour from a full
> bottle of wine into a half-bottle without a funnel of some kind.
>
> Plastic 1/3 liter water bottles are almost perfect: they're a good
> size, they have a wider mouth for easier pouring, and they have a
> tight-fitting cap. The only problem with plastic water bottles is,
> well...that they're plastic. They're subject to cracking and the wine
> will eventually discolor the bottle.
>
> My current experiment seems to be working well. I'm using the bottles
> from the Starbucks coffee drink Frappuccino that's available in
> grocery stores. It's a glass bottle, 281 ml, with a wide mouth, and a
> tight fitting cork. Buy a 4-pack (I recommend the Hazelnut), save the
> empty bottles, run them through the dishwasher a few times to get rid
> of the coffee ghosts, and they're perfect for overnight wine storage.
>
> A useful technique involving this is to save the small bottles first
> rather than last. If you'd like to have a single glass of wine at
> midnight, open a bottle, immediately fill two small bottles, and then
> drink the rest. In other words, save the beginning of the bottle
> rather than the end. I haven't yet tried storing one of the little
> bottles for any substantial period of time, but for one or two days, I
> can't tell the difference between the original bottle of wine and the
> stored bottle.
>
>

On 30-Oct-2003, Kent Feiler > wrote:

> I was interested in discussion about how to open a bottle of wine,
> drink a bit, and then save the remaining portion to fight another day.
> The general idea was to pour it into a smaller bottle to reduce the
> amount of O2 that comes into contact with it. The obvious smaller
> bottle to use was a wine half-bottle.
>
> But oddly enough, wine half-bottles really aren't ideal for this
> purpose. If the amount of wine remaining is less than a half-bottle,
> there are O2 problems again, and it's difficult to pour from a full
> bottle of wine into a half-bottle without a funnel of some kind.

The idea behind this is to minimize the amount of oxygen that you have to
deal with. Pour your remaining wine into the half-bottle, then use either
liquid nitrogen to push the O2 off of the wine or a Vaccu-Vin (or both).
It's much easier to displace a smaller amount of O2 that would remain in a
half-bottle.

>
> Plastic 1/3 liter water bottles are almost perfect: they're a good
> size, they have a wider mouth for easier pouring, and they have a
> tight-fitting cap. The only problem with plastic water bottles is,
> well...that they're plastic. They're subject to cracking and the wine
> will eventually discolor the bottle.

I would think that plastic would also not work well because it is more
"pourous" than glass. Think about an unopened bottle of coke that has sat
around for a while.... it goes flat. Of course, I'm assuming that you are
only talking about a day or two, so this shouldn't be a big deal.

>
> My current experiment seems to be working well. I'm using the bottles
> from the Starbucks coffee drink Frappuccino that's available in
> grocery stores. It's a glass bottle, 281 ml, with a wide mouth, and a
> tight fitting cork. Buy a 4-pack (I recommend the Hazelnut), save the
> empty bottles, run them through the dishwasher a few times to get rid
> of the coffee ghosts, and they're perfect for overnight wine storage.
>
> A useful technique involving this is to save the small bottles first
> rather than last. If you'd like to have a single glass of wine at
> midnight, open a bottle, immediately fill two small bottles, and then
> drink the rest. In other words, save the beginning of the bottle
> rather than the end. I haven't yet tried storing one of the little
> bottles for any substantial period of time, but for one or two days, I
> can't tell the difference between the original bottle of wine and the
> stored bottle.

That's a good thought to first fill up a small bottle and then drink the
rest. For a day or two, even using a regular cork and nothing else, I have
had good results depending on the wine. I don't know of anything short of a
professional (read expensive) nitrogen system that will do well for more
than this.

I bought a bottle capper with a pump attached to it.... about 10usd.

You just put it on like a cork and pump the air out.... it seems to
make a fair vacumn....

I use it on inexpensive (cheap) cabs... which I refridgerate after
opening.... and I would finish within a few days...

I really couldn`t tell you if it does any better than just replacing the
cork.... but it doesn`t make it any worst... And, I`m happy with the
results I`ve had.....

Aren't you affecting the wine more by pouring from one bottle into the
other?

-- kov

CabFan wrote:

>
> The idea behind this is to minimize the amount of oxygen that you have to
> deal with. Pour your remaining wine into the half-bottle, then use either
> liquid nitrogen to push the O2 off of the wine or a Vaccu-Vin (or both).
> It's much easier to displace a smaller amount of O2 that would remain in a
> half-bottle.

Mostly what is done is to leave virtually no head space in the bottle and then
seal it, thereby eliminating any possible contact with O2. And gaseous
nitrogen is usually better for this purpose than the liquid ;-)

>
>
> >
> > Plastic 1/3 liter water bottles are almost perfect: they're a good
> > size, they have a wider mouth for easier pouring, and they have a
> > tight-fitting cap. The only problem with plastic water bottles is,
> > well...that they're plastic. They're subject to cracking and the wine
> > will eventually discolor the bottle.
>
> I would think that plastic would also not work well because it is more
> "pourous" than glass. Think about an unopened bottle of coke that has sat
> around for a while.... it goes flat. Of course, I'm assuming that you are
> only talking about a day or two, so this shouldn't be a big deal.

You're comparing apples and oranges here. The soda goes flat over time from
the diffusion of CO2 through the plastic, driven in large part by the pressure
differential that exists between inside and outside the bottle. I suspect that
the rate of diffusion in the absence of a pressure differential is much
smaller.

Mark Lipton

I tend to drink the whole bottle...that seems to fix any problems . The
only thing I store is port in the fridge. Depending on the type, I get get
a few weeks out of it.


"Ken Overton" > wrote in message
...
> Aren't you affecting the wine more by pouring from one bottle into the
> other?
>
> -- kov
>

>
> You're comparing apples and oranges here. The soda goes flat over time
from
> the diffusion of CO2 through the plastic, driven in large part by the
pressure
> differential that exists between inside and outside the bottle. I suspect
that
> the rate of diffusion in the absence of a pressure differential is much
> smaller.
>
> Mark Lipton
>
>

Sorry Mark, I didn't mean to reply to your email...

-CO2 can't diffuse through plastic.
-Soda that has never been opened will never go flat
-The more soda that is missing means the more volume of air at normal
pressure after the cap is closed, and the faster this soda will go flat.
-The CO2 will escape the soda until the pressure inside the bottle is great
enough to keep the CO2 in the soda.

It's a little different than with wine, because with wine, it's not a
pressure thing, it's a chemical reaction with O2, so you specifically want
to keep O2 out of the bottle. With soda, you just want to repressurize the
container with anything. The similarity in the two cases, is that the
container is flawed for repetitive use and storage.

Ken Overton wrote:
> Aren't you affecting the wine more by pouring from one bottle into the
> other?

You're basically aging it faster, though not in a balanced way.
I've done similar things and find that I can get a few more 'good'
days out of a bottle, but not much more.

My pal Randy suggested a Platypus flexible plastic water bottle
as a wine storage vessel, since you can expel the air. It's quite
good and doesn't seem to take on the wine color or flavor.

Dana

"SJP" > wrote:

> -Soda that has never been opened will never go flat

Sorry, definitely wrong. I don't know after how many years the CO2 is
out of a PET bottle - 2, 3, 5? - but I had perfecly flat soda water
from a freshly opend old plastic bottle.

M.

Michael Pronay > wrote:

>> -Soda that has never been opened will never go flat

> Sorry, definitely wrong. I don't know after how many years the
> CO2 is out of a PET bottle - 2, 3, 5? - but I had perfecly flat
> soda water from a freshly opend old plastic bottle.

To specify, I've just talked to a guy that deals in soft drinks.
One-way PET bottles - at least in Europe, where one-way packaging
material is taxed on weight - today are quite thin. After one
year, decrease of CO2 is discernible, after two years it would be
flat.

M.

According an experiment conducted at
http://wine.about.com/library/weekly/aa102700.htm the best way to keep red
wine is to pour it off into a smaller bottle (as you have suggested) and
keep out the 02.

The starbucks bottles seem like a good solution as I have also struggled
with saving the right amount of wine, for the half-bottle.

Thanks for the tip.


"Kent Feiler" > wrote in message
...
> I was interested in discussion about how to open a bottle of wine,
> drink a bit, and then save the remaining portion to fight another day.
> The general idea was to pour it into a smaller bottle to reduce the
> amount of O2 that comes into contact with it. The obvious smaller
> bottle to use was a wine half-bottle.
>
> But oddly enough, wine half-bottles really aren't ideal for this
> purpose. If the amount of wine remaining is less than a half-bottle,
> there are O2 problems again, and it's difficult to pour from a full
> bottle of wine into a half-bottle without a funnel of some kind.
>
> Plastic 1/3 liter water bottles are almost perfect: they're a good
> size, they have a wider mouth for easier pouring, and they have a
> tight-fitting cap. The only problem with plastic water bottles is,
> well...that they're plastic. They're subject to cracking and the wine
> will eventually discolor the bottle.
>
> My current experiment seems to be working well. I'm using the bottles
> from the Starbucks coffee drink Frappuccino that's available in
> grocery stores. It's a glass bottle, 281 ml, with a wide mouth, and a
> tight fitting cork. Buy a 4-pack (I recommend the Hazelnut), save the
> empty bottles, run them through the dishwasher a few times to get rid
> of the coffee ghosts, and they're perfect for overnight wine storage.
>
> A useful technique involving this is to save the small bottles first
> rather than last. If you'd like to have a single glass of wine at
> midnight, open a bottle, immediately fill two small bottles, and then
> drink the rest. In other words, save the beginning of the bottle
> rather than the end. I haven't yet tried storing one of the little
> bottles for any substantial period of time, but for one or two days, I
> can't tell the difference between the original bottle of wine and the
> stored bottle.
>
>