On my radio show, The Spirits of New Mexico I often provide helpful wine tips. This question from a listener was very challenging for me because it seldom comes up in my house. It was years before I even discovered what leftover wine was. Wow, people leave wine in the bottle? Who knew? OK, maybe I’m being a bit disingenuous so here are some helpful definitions.
Leftover wine: The wine no one at the party would dare taste again. Usually sneaked in by someone drinking all the good stuff everybody else brought. If you ever hosted a wine party you probably had a couple of these show up.
Leftover wine: The mysterious bottle of an unknown wine with a weird label you just discovered in your wine cabinet. You’ve been having too many wine parties of late.
Leftover wine: The bottle of Hiney Brothers wine an acquaintance gave you as a gift that is still gathering dust ten years later.
Yes there really was a Hiney Brothers wine. It began as a hoax on radio, but someone did give me a bottle that I sat on a shelf above the washing machine. No way was that bottle going into my wine cellar, a 900 bottle very large wine cabinet. Then the 1989 Loma Prieda earthquake hit. We lived in Los Gatos back then and I was on my bike heading for home when it hit. I watched the road suddenly turn to rubber, or so I thought. It was actually the earth moving in waves underneath the asphalt, and here I was riding it like a roller coaster.
I made it home in my usual time. Actually ahead of my usual time because I was riding in an earthquake! When I went into the garage to check on my wine, the door had shaken open and four bottles of my favorite Zinfandel were smashed on the ground. The bottle of Hiney Brothers had fallen off the shelf, missed hitting the washing machine and landed, unharmed, in an open box of detergent. Who said God doesn’t have a sense of humor? Yes, that is a true story.
I promptly put a lock on the wine cabinet and swore at the bottle of Hiney Brothers as I put it back on the shelf.
Leftover wine: The wine in the bottom of a spit bucket that no one in their right mind would ever drink. Oh, wait! Miles did drink from a spit bucket in Sideways (2004). Paul Giamatti was the no f—ing Merlot guy to be exact. It would serve him right if there was some Merlot in that spit bucket.
Leftover wine: The New Mexico State Fair wine competition is one of the biggest sources of leftover wine in the state. At each annual competition, there are over fifty wine judges, each sampling over 50 wines with several times that number of bottles in the backroom. That is where all the flights of wine originate that judges then sample and rate. In the aftermath of all that judging we then have several cases of leftover re-corked wine in the backroom. Which is where we wine judges go to check out what we tasted. But as all of us were true stewards of wine, we made sure each leftover wine found a good home.
Taking care of leftover wines
And, of course, leftover wine could be the last 8 oz of a really good red wine, but your palate said no and you wanted to keep it safe for another day. It is best not to overindulge, but you really want the last of the wine to taste as good as when it was opened. Depends a lot on the wine itself, but well-crafted wines always stand up better. Whites and Rose pose few problems, but reds do require special handling. So here are some tips:
Make sure you have at least 2 or 3 stoppers on hand to replace an unusable original closure.
- Glass stoppers are great for this and fit many bottles, but not all
- Save the elaborate stoppers with Bacchus pouring wine from his mouth as a Christmas decoration
- Make sure you save a couple of screw caps for the ones that often go missing, hopefully in different colors that don’t clash with the wine label. Yeah, right, who cares?
- Also hold on to those 387 mil (half-bottles) to save the unused portion of a 750ml bottle.
Put a stopper on the unused wine immediately when done and store in fridge; both whites and reds. The colder temperatures cause the wine to close down, but allow time to bring it back to the proper temperature before serving. And no microwave use to speed it up, please.
Use Vac-u-Vin or a vacuum pump type product to remove oxygen from red wines, but not whites or rose. They are happy just being resealed and back on chill. The best odds for having red wine still taste fine is partly based on the tannins and alcohol. More is better here. In any case, a well-made wine will always hold up longer, and lighter-bodied wines like Pinot Noir will suffer from too much fridge time.
Or you could switch to beer. Nobody seems to be upset over leftover beer.
The Spirits of New Mexico airs every Saturday afternoon on KIVA from 4pm to 5pm. Tune in at 1600 AM and 93.7 FM. Alternately from your browser enter ABQ.FM and an app will come up with an image of a Macintosh receiver. To the right is a dial to select our shows or for music. Select Spirits of NM to hear my current continuously looped program. And do please leave comments or questions I can use in a follow-up show.
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