Q: “I like to drink wine every night, but that means that I’m often left with a few bottles open at any given time. What’s the best way to keep them fresh, and how long will they keep?”

A: This question has come up quite a bit lately, so I thought it would be a good topic to delve into in a post. But instead of just telling you my own method, I thought I’d turn to a few experts and fellow bloggers and ask them what they do with their leftover wine (that is, if they ever have any left over). The panelists were Lenn Thompson of LennDevours, Alder Yarrow of Vinography, Tom Wark of Fermentation, Pedro Rusk from The Wine Shop here in Healdsburg and Sommelier Jim Rollston at Cyrus (yes, I even did research for this on That Night . . . see how devoted I am?) Here’s what they said:

Q: First off, how often do you have wine leftover? Do you open a bottle every night and end up with several halfsies by the end of the week or do you polish off a solid 750 with each meal?

TW: We have left over wine nearly every night. If we don’t, we open a bottle. We usually finish a bottle before opening another unless it’s a dinner party situation.

LT: I open wine almost every day and on weekends when I’m doing tastings, several bottles. If there are wines that I think aren’t good and won’t ‘open up’ with a day or two after I open it, I dump it.

PR: [laughter] Are you kidding? I’ve always got wine open!

Q: When you do have wine leftover, what do you do to store it? Different for red or white?

AY: I vacuum seal it and throw it in the fridge. Both red and white.

LT: If a wine is good, or one that I think still has potential, I use the Vacu-Vin handpump thing. I have several rubber stoppers. I’ll put it in the fridge if it’s a white. If it’s a red, it goes on the counter.

TW: If the left over is red, we simply cork it with a stopper that is air tight (not the cork) and leave it on the counter for the next evening. If it is white, we do the same but put it in the fridge.

JR: We use inert gas—like what’s in Private Reserve. It forces out the oxygen, it’s the best way to keep wines.

PR: I use Private Reserve. It’s cheap and it’s the best thing around.

Q. How long do you keep your open bottles? Is there a particular indicator that tells you when they’ve gone south?

AY: I stop drinking them when they taste oxidized.

LT: Because I’m opening wines so often for my various writing, I usually only keep wines for a few days. Lots of whites end up being dumped, but I make vinegar with a lot of the reds that would otherwise be dumped.

TW: If the wine stays with us and open for more than two days it’s a wine we didn’t like very much and I’ll throw out the rest. There’s too much wine to try and too much in our cellar to fixate on finishing a bottle that’s average at best. Usually it’s oxidation that is the indicator that the wine has gone bad, but that’s usually not the reason it gets dumped in our house.

Lia’s Two Cents . . .

First off, I—as I’m sure many of you will be—was relieved to see that I’m not the only one who faces the conundrum of having too many wines open at once. Second, Christopher and I have been die-hard Vacu-Vin users for years now and it’s worked well for us. But with Jim and Pedro’s comments (and several others I found on various blogs), I thought it might be time to give inert gas a try. When I found a bottle of Private Reserve at Pedro’s store for just under $10, I nabbed it in the name of research. Stay tuned for the results . . . Third, I love Lenn’s idea about making vinegar out of the reds he didn’t particularly like and I think we could all learn a bit from his attitude. Sort of the wine-lovers take on “make lemonade when life hands you lemons.” Thanks for your input all!

P.S. — Speaking of wine, I’ve added the wine pairings to The Duo of Deluxe Din-Dins . . . so take a peek if you like!