Saving Your Wine, Vacu Vin Style

In the last post I discussed the benefit of letting wine breath and stretch it's legs, but there's a limit. Wine is a fermented product which contains preservatives, sulfites to be exact. Sulfites or sulfur dioxide is a fruit preservative widely used in dried fruits as well as wine. These sulfites will help preserve the wine in the bottle but after it's opened, it's a different story. After the wine is exposed to air the wine starts a slow and steady decline towards vinegar. In my experience a wine tastes starkly different the day after it's opened and it only gets worse as more time passes.

A lot of people stick the cork back in the bottle, which helps a little, but not much. I saw a special one day on the human body, I learned that one antioxidant keeping us alive, Oxygen, is also killing us slowly. The very same Oxygen is also killing your newly opened bottle of wine.

Alas there are some things you can do to extend the life of your bottle. Much like produce, milk, eggs, etc. keeping the wine refrigerated after opening can extend it's life a little, but removing the oxygen can extend it's life a LOT.

The Vacu Vin, is a simple contraption that enables you to re-cork and remove the air from an opened bottle of wine. It's a simple product, easy to do and works like a charm. You can pick up a pack with pumper and two rubber corks at most liquor or wine stores. The Vacu Vin works like a bicycle pump in reverse. The rubber corks within have a valve not unlike your bike tire, accept instead of accepting air when you pump you're actually removing air when you pump. Depending on how much wine is left in your bottle, it make take more or less time to pump out the air (5-10 pumps). For good measure I like to pump until it becomes difficult to pull the "pumper" up and/or I can no longer smell the "wine air" I'm pumping out.

Let's face it, unless you're having a dinner party or sharing a bottle of wine with friends, the odds of you getting through an entire bottle of wine are slim. Unlike a beer, a bottle of wine is an investment when you open it, so why not save it for later without sacrificing taste? I have to admit, the first time I used a Vacu Vin, I was a little skeptical. After tasting the same wine I Vacu Vin'd a full week later, I was pleasantly surprised. The wine was very close to the day I opened it. Trust me, once you use this little contraption, you'll never go back. Cheers!