Leftover wine: Save it or dump it?

Let’s talk about leftover wine. (Yes, such a thing does exist.) If you don’t finish the bottle you opened with dinner, are the remains a lost cause?

In my opinion, this question has two answers: “Not necessarily,” and “It depends.”

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First, a dose of reality: Exposure to air – oxygen in particular – will eventually destroy wine. Oxidation, essentially a slow burn, eventually turns any wine dark in color and dank in aroma and flavor, eventually decaying into something resembling a noxious form of Sherry.

Once the bottle is opened (or even if a cork or screw cap fails), this inexorable process begins. Leave a partial bottle exposed to air, and the contents will eventually go around the bend.

But here’s where things get complicated: While too much oxidation is absolutely a bad thing, a little bit might not matter much; and a calculated amount can actually be good. Yes, wine can be confusing.

Consider, for example, that the traditional wine cork, despite its flaws, works well in cellaring wine because it admits a tiny bit of air into the bottle to foster gentle evolution. Too little oxygen transmission and the wine won’t age well, or at all. This posed a challenge as screw caps became more commonplace, because early models didn’t admit enough air for proper aging. (Advances in closure technology appear to have overcome this challenge.)

For the individual wine lover, the issue is simpler and more immediate: How can we enjoy a bottle over a few days if it begins deteriorating on Day One?

All manner of products promise to help us with this, ranging from simple stoppers to gizmos that suck some of the air out of a bottle to an expensive, high-tech tool that will extract a taste through a thin needle without removing the cork!

I’ve tried a lot of these devices over the years and have concluded that a simple, no-cost approach works about as well as anything I can buy: Put the cork back in the bottle and plan to finish it within a day or two at room temperature (or possibly a week for modest white wines in the refrigerator) before oxidation works its evil will on the contents.

And finally, the best news: If you’re keeping part of a young, ageworthy red wine that you probably sacrificed before its time, holding it on the counter for a day or three may actually make it even more enjoyable. I’m not going to claim that this emulates the gentle process of long, slow cellaring. But with the right wine, and good timing, that second time around can be just as enjoyable as the first.

I tried this approach with this week’s featured wine, Sottimano 2023 Langhe Nebbiolo, and delightedly got two days’ enjoyment out of the bottle.

The wine, a tasty and modestly ageworthy red from Northwestern Italy’s Piemonte region, was delicious on Day One (featured beyond the paywall below). At 14% alcohol at lunch on a busy workday, though, finishing it at a sitting wasn’t in the cards.

So I recapped the half-finished bottle and kept it upright at cool room temperature for a few days. When I returned to it, the wine had changed in small ways but, happily, remained unharmed by this experience.

There was no sign of browning in the wine’s color, even at the edges when held up to the light, and no Sherry-like signal of oxidation. It may have lost a bit of complexity: The distinct violet and rose aromas that I detected on the first day had merged into a pleasant but less clearly identifiable floral scent that harmonized with a juicy fresh-cherry note. There was still good, fresh-fruit acidity in the flavor, and the tannic astringency that signaled the wine’s youth remained present but had become more muted.

I wouldn’t risk this approach for much longer than three or four days. The difference between delight and disappointment can be measured in days or hours, so if you try it, be cautious … and don’t set your hopes too high. This approach does not effectively emulate the joyful subtleties of proper cellaring for years. But it sure beats having to pour out half of a bottle that you didn’t want to finish.

What’s your opinion? If you don’t finish a bottle of wine, are the remains a lost cause?

The $30 price on this week’s featured wine, Sottimano Langhe Nebbiolo, keeps it behind our subscription paywall. Since I buy all the wines I review at retail and do not accept wine samples or other gratuities from the industry, I count on the support of paid subscribers to help cover the cost of the wines I review. Accordingly, I have to reserve wines that cost me more than about $20 behind our subscription paywall.

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