Question about wine...

[Linda in MO]

How long does leftover wine last in the fridge? I bought a bottle of white wine for cooking but I'm just wondering if the leftover wine will still be good to cook with at a later date. Also, what about sherry?
Thanks!

[Beth]

I'm not an expert, but in my experience, how long an opened bottle will last has more to do with things like the wine, the amount of air in the botle (how full or empty it is and whether you've pumped it), and how long the bottle sat opened than whether its in the fridge or the days on your calendar. The best recommendation I can give is to buy a wine pump that will remove the air from the bottle. The wine will not continue to oxidize and turn, or it will be minimal. The one we have is sold in catalogs, on line, in wine and kitchen shops, even in the grocery store. There are also things that inject an inert gas into the bottle to replace the oxygen, but I like the idea of removing air better than shooting something else in, and it's the least expensive.

[Beth H]

The wine, even with the vacuum pump, probably won't last more than 10 days in the fridge once opened.

[sneezles]

Linda
I don't have the answer but if your wine does turn you can still use it as white wine vinegar.

[Gail]

This question pops up every so often and I think everyone is right on. Your wine begins oxidating as soon as it's opened, so if you're planning to drink it later, the Vac-u-vin thing would be the way to go. As for cooking, gee, I wouldn't worry about it, unless you're making something heavily dependent upon purity of wine taste. You may have to keep a lookout for sediments, if you keep it long enough (which I've yet to do), cooking with vingar is actually quite tasty. I cook with a lot of wine and sherry and keep my sherry corked and in the cabinet where it stays for months. I've got a half-used bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau which has been sitting on the counter since Thanksgiving. Can't say I'd want to sit around sipping the stuff, but I used it in a roast last week and the results were excellent.

In case you're interested, here's another discussion on the subject of storing opened wine: www.cookinglight.com/bbs/Forum1/HTML/001770.html (http://www.cookinglight.com/bbs/Forum1/HTML/001770.html)

[lindrusso]

I have kept sherry, opened, for indefinite periods of time and it always seems to fair quite well. Not sure about the white wine....