Wine for Singles

I like wine, but I am single and most of the time I just want a single glass of wine, not a whole bottle.

Is there a way for me to still buy whatever wine I want and only drink a glass a day and not have the rest of the bottle go bad after a short while?

I mostly drink red wine and to a lesser extent white wine.

[Robin Garr]

David, the easy answer is to reseal the bottle and finish it in the next day or two. Unless it was aged and fragile, it should hold up well for a day or two at (air conditioned) room temperature. Second-best bet is to put the half-empty bottle in the refrigerator. Allowed to come back up to cool room temperature before you drink it, it should last a week.

You can buy some gimmicks that suck air out of the bottle and/or replace it with inert gas, but in my experience, they don't help much more than the simpler suggestions above.

Third option: If you're not put off by the downscale image, SOME of the boxed wines are pretty good these days, and they're usually good for two or three weeks. I'd be a little wary of holding them much longer than that.

Robin's ideas are good. I'd also suggest going to store and buying cheap Sutter Home or whatever in the 187ml bottles (I think usually 4 pks). Drink if you can, or use for cooking. Then when you open a better bottle fill 3 of the 1/4 bottles to the rim - with screwcap they should be fine for a week at room temp or couple weeks in fridge

The problem with boxed wines is that they always come in 3 liter boxes, at least where I live. Sure, it stays good a lot longer, but I still can't finish 3 liters of wine one glass a day before it turns if not bad then at least considerably worse.

Maybe I'm too sensitive, but I already feel that the wine in a bottle is considerably worse the day after opening it, even if I am closing the bottle instantly. I do actually own a vacuum pumping device for wine bottles including some sort of smart rubber thingy to seal the bottle with, that allows for air to be pumped out. Nothing is pumped in to replace the air. I don't think that's necessary as long as most of the oxygen is removed from the bottle. I've never used it for some reason, I'll try it out.

Personally I don't think those vacu-vin things are particularly effective.
I have tried the Private Reserve (argon/CO2/nitrogen) and think it works ok for saving an older bottle one day, but would be expensive (and maybe not too effective) to get 4 or 5 days out of a bottle
The amount of oxygen involved in decanting a just opened bottle into a 375 or multiple 187s (especially if screwcap and you fill up to top) is pretty minimal.

I'm interested in what you think of the air extractor.

Personally I loathe them, for the reasons that
1) It's already too late, the act of opening and pouring the wine has already let oxygen at the wine
2) It can't extract all the oxygen, so what's left can act on the wine
3) the pump also removes the wine's bouquet, and 'scalps' the flavour
4)the rubber bung seems often to impart a rubbery taste to the wine.

my technique is to reseal the bottle as soon after opening as possible and put the bottle upright in the fridge door. The cool temperature retards deterioration of wine just the same as it does for other foods you use fridge, andr. wines seem to keep OK for a couple of days.

For an occasional single glass of wine supermarkets here have a good range of single serving bottles - 187ml. Brand wines such as Campo Vieja Rioja rathe than fine wine, to be sure, but fresh and clean when newly opened and no wastage

I have found that some wines even taste better the next day after a night in the fridge..I have a passive walk in wine cellar, 8 ft by 13 ft and the wines are pretty cool all year long in te cellar..I just seal my wines after drinking and stick em, red, white or rose, in the fridge..I usually finish a bottle over 3 nights and have not had any problems with this approach...and I have been drinking wine for > 50 years.

I haven't found the air extractors or inert gas sprays to be useful.

What I use is a nitrogen wine dispensing system. It has a tube that ends in a spigot that you put in place of the cork. Before sealing the neck of the bottle, you bleed the ullage with nitrogen. You then fill your glass from the spigot, and low-pressure nitrogen replaces the wine. An open bottle keeps for months this way--it's almost as if you never opened the bottle.

-Paul W.

As always: Coravin.

Greetings from Sweden / Fredrik L