Wine Storage and Preservation
What doesn't work
After many years of frustration at conventional means of keeping
left-over wine from going bad, I spend a couple of months of trying to
develop better ways to store wine. (Why don't I just drink the whole
bottle? I really can't drink a whole bottle of wine every night.) I
tried the usual Vacuvin pumps, which don't get all the air out, and
the nitrogen "squirt bottles", which do work O.K. if you use them very
liberally (I used a dozen of them in one year before getting tired of
buying them.) I also tried mylar bags (what bag-wine comes in), which
I thought was clever, but you can't really wash them out. I also tried
to devise clever mechanical means to keep the wine out of contact with air,
hoping to invent and patent something.
Finally the obvious dawned on me!
What does work
If you pour your wine into smaller bottles, you can fill the bottles
right to the top, and then the wine keeps perfectly. Screw-top bottles
such as Perrier, San Pellegrino, and the little wine bottles you get on
planes and trains work particularly well. Just make sure to "rebottle"
within an hour of when you stop drinking!
Wine preservation methods: old and new
Enjoy!
- Lyle
ungar@cis.upenn.edu