N/A Winekeeping

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TCABM

Final Approach
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Hopefully @flyingron or somebody with more expertise than me can shed some light on these contraptions for me so I can make my wife happier than she already is.

My wife can’t stand wine from a bottle that’s been open for more than a day and, unless we’re entertaining, we never finish a bottle in one fell swoop. She also doesn’t like box wine, so that means she has a glass an inevitably pours out more than she drinks.

We’ve seem everything from the Coravin systems to the multi-bottle multi-zone pouring systems out there and she thinks one of these is the answer to her problem. My problem is I don’t know squat about it and the prices run from fun money to multiple AMUs.

Here’s the mission: preserve for a week or two up to four bottles that may be open at any one time so that every glass tastes as close to the first pour as possible. This may be a mixture of reds and white, but we can live with two of each or four of one color being the limitation.

Educate me so I can make her happy without having to resort to jewelry because her tastes there are much more refined and would take away from the flying hours budget.
 
My wife has a little stopper with a pump that apparently creates a vacuum in the bottle for this purpose. I'm not a wine person so I can't testify to how well it works though. But I believe that it was inexpensive enough to give it a go with low risk.
 
I have several coravin and one of the multibottle dispensors. They both work well. The vacuvin does OK, but it's a far trail to the systems that avoid letting oxygen in to things.
 
My pub uses these rubber stopper things that create a partial vacuum when pushed down on the wines they don’t sell regularly. But once oxidation starts, it doesn’t stop. Buy mini bottles??
 
Sac Arrow said:
My pub uses these rubber stopper things that create a partial vacuum when pushed down on the wines they don’t sell regularly. But once oxidation starts, it doesn’t stop. Buy mini bottles??
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That’s the point with Coravin, so I understand. Most of the multi-bottle systems I’ve seen require corking the bottle, but Coravin apparently takes a giant needle with an airlock in it and shove that thru the cork with an inert gas backfill.

It’s probably not that high speed, but seems more airtight than the vacuum based systems.
 
The Coravin has a needle that goes through the cork (or in the case of screw caps a special stopper installed as soon as the bottle is uncapped). It pushes argon in and wine out. It never allows oxygen to go in. There is also a lower end Coravin pivot which uses a fatter "straw" and rubber stopper to accomplish the same thing. The various other schemes do similar things where you put a full bottle into the thing with the stopper and run nitrogen or whatever through it.

I have four Coravins (Admittedly three of them were donated to me) and one 16 bottle wine dispensor (got out of a restaurant off ebay).
 
I live in Central Washington State along the Columbia River. This area has become quite popular for their wines. We have vineyards and tasting rooms everywhere, dozens of them. I asked that question about "Storing Opened Wine Bottle". Nobody here has ever heard of that before :drink::wineglass::drink:.

There's one tip that I've not seen before, transfer to a smaller bottle with very little room for oxygen.

Some of the wineries are starting to 'Can' their wine to be more environmental friendly. The cans are usually 250 to 350ml. A bottle is usually 750ml.

You searched for canned wines - Great Northwest Wine

greatnorthwestwine.com greatnorthwestwine.com

The folks here suggest your wife become a heavier drinker :cheerswine: :blowingkisses::cheerswine:
 
Try to get her into sparkling or champagne? Those cheap and freebie champagne reusable tops work wonders, like still bubbles for 5 days easily.

But for a nice red wine, really it needs to breathe, so you can put it in a nice decanter and have some on night 1 and finish the rest on night 2. Some wine lovers have told me that wine on day 2 is better but I haven’t figured that out yet. Maybe day 2 in the morning (I don’t like to drink during daylight usually) but not sure about 24 hours. But perhaps a late dinner wine and a lunch wine the next day?

I am guessing you can open a bottle of red and pour half into a decanter, and put the cork in, then that should slow the oxidation process and put it in a decanter on night 2 or 3 and finish it off then? I have those red wine corking things with a pump (made by Le Creuset) and never used it once, usually we finish a bottle (2 glasses x 2 people). A nice red wine could require 2-10 hours of breathing.
 
Okay, follow up on Coravin. Am I stuck e/a proprietary gas cartridge or are there generic replacements I can buy?
 
We have a couple of these and my wife, who has better taste than I, likes them She too used throw out wine after about a day or two with just the cork in it.
I figured they were cheap enough that when they failed we could just buy more. Four years later, we have not had to replace them.


edit: I should have posted this one. It has the plunger. The previous link was just a couple of spare stoppers.
 
TCABM said:
Okay, follow up on Coravin. Am I stuck e/a proprietary gas cartridge or are there generic replacements I can buy?
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It’s a standard cartridge with a proprietary adapter. It’s fairly easy to remove the adapter and move it to a generic cartridge, I did a few times and it works well, but not worth it to me.
 
The rate of oxidation varies with temperature. For my own unrefined tastes, I've found it works okay to just cork the bottle and put it in the refrigerator. Good enough for four or five days. When I pour a glass, I can just let it warm a while on its own or cup the bowl of the wine glass in my hands to warm the wine a bit. I've even given a glass a 10-second zap in the microwave to take the chill off.

Not perfect, but virtually free.
 
I keg my home brew and sometimes have a keg going for 6+ months. This works b/c a heavier than O2 layer of CO2 sits on top of the beer. I wonder if a C02 mini keg would work for wine? Same principle as Coravin but possibly cheaper.
 
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Both of my sons use the special plugs and vacuum pump. Happy with them for over many years.

Daughter in law likes box wines for her small glass at lunch. I have had a glass with her, and found it quite good, but understand the ambiance of pouring from the bottle at the table, and a choice of reds for the beef based meal. Perish the thought that the hostess choose your wine!
 
Seems like just buying or reusing a couple of empty 375 ml and 500 ml wine bottles would be easier. Open the 750 ml bottle of wine, pour it into the smaller bottle, stopper or even cork that one, then drink the rest.

I can't imagine this wouldn't work for a week or two.
 
Since there are some here who only understand pictures, another option is to drink crappier wine. Deterioration will be relatively less noticeable.

1724335620387.png
 
Mahneuvers said:
Since there are some here who only understand pictures, another option is to drink crappier wine. Deterioration will be relatively less noticeable.

View attachment 132677
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That explains why I'm perfectly happy with my little vacuum stopper things for a few days. My fancy wine is Carnivor at about $9 a bottle from Sam's Club. The everyday stuff says Kirkland on the label.

I've been tempted to try some really good wine, but there are thousands of choices and ALL of them claim to be really great. Too much work to try to figure it out when $10 bottles make me happy.
 
RussR said:
Seems like just buying or reusing a couple of empty 375 ml and 500 ml wine bottles would be easier. Open the 750 ml bottle of wine, pour it into the smaller bottle, stopper or even cork that one, then drink the rest.

I can't imagine this wouldn't work for a week or two.
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We did that when we lived in Italy and our wine came in 10L demijohns and there’s pros/cons to doing it that way.
 
Simply purge with CO2.
 
In Italy, the bars and restaurants bought their house wines in 50 liter "Florence flasks", put the special valves in and set on the back shelf in a neck dowsn position. They drew you a glass of wine in much the same manner as a glass of beer. Similar to beer, the valves were provided by the makers of the wine, and had their brand on it. The wine was replaced by air, but the flask probably was emptied in less than a week.
 
geezer said:
In Italy, the bars and restaurants bought their house wines in 50 liter "Florence flasks", put the special valves in and set on the back shelf in a neck dowsn position. They drew you a glass of wine in much the same manner as a glass of beer. Similar to beer, the valves were provided by the makers of the wine, and had their brand on it. The wine was replaced by air, but the flask probably was emptied in less than a week.
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Have seen the same thing in France in stores. The local residents bring in 2L bottles and fill them.
 
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