Kitchen Tips: Storing Leftover Wine

Kitchen Tips: Storing Leftover Wine - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. Recenlty I was asked, "what do I do with the leftover wine in my bottle". I had to chuckle because at my house, we really have left over wine. We plan around it inviting friends over to make sure we used up the entire bottle. But just in case you have leftover wine, you have a couple of options. If it is a bottle of wine that cost ten to maybe twenty-five dollars, it is okay to store it in the refrigerator, as long as you have the cork back in. What is bad and damaging to the wine is when it is exposed to air. So if you can re-cork it immediately that would be fine. If you come across a bottle like if you buy a really good expensive bottle of olive oil, you get these little caps. That works really even better because it is really stiff and this way it becomes air tight. Air is the enemy here. Now your other option could be, there are products you can buy in the wine shops where they will actually suck all the air out so you will not have a problem. I hate to have to buy another gadget though. So what I would suggest is using this. Or you could buy a wine split which is a smaller bottle of wine. Drink it up, store it and whenever you have leftover wine, pour it into the split. This way the whole split will fill up with wine and then cap it. You can store it in the refrigerator for several days, maybe even up to a week depending on the wine. I would suggest not leaving it at room temperature though. But my better option, I would cook with it. Go ahead and add that to that braising pot of short ribs on the stove or a really terrific tomato sauce. Or if it is a white wine, make a ber blance butter sauce with tarragon to go over scallops. I would definitely use it. I would probably drink it first.