Too Much Wine?

Filed in archive Wine News on April 6, 2007

It has never occurred to me that someone could have too much wine. Is that really possible? I guess if you own a wine bar or restuarant it could happen, especially if you over stock too much. About the only time I've had wine go bad around here is after it's been open a few days and my Princess and the Pea mentality notices that it's more on the vinegar side than the wine size. But the article suggests that one tip for preventing this is to put the cork back in the right way along with keeping it in the frig.

From Trelio gets creative to prevent buildup of wines:

Before you look for other restaurants with overstocked wine cellars, remember that this is a problem for ones focusing on small-production wines.

Shackelford, the former cellar director of Erna's Elderberry House in Oakhurst, has worked his contacts to secure coveted allocations (the bottles wineries reserve for restaurants every year). If Shackelford cancels an alloca- tion, he says he may never get back on a winery's list.

So he'll keep buying the wine and opening bottles at the bar -- even if it means dumping a lot of unused wine from open bottles.

"A young red or white wine can last a day," Shackelford says. "Other than that, we don't play too much with the preservation of wine."

He has tried injecting argon gas into bottles or using vacuum-sealed toppers. But at Erna's, he learned a simpler method for keeping wine for a day or two: Put the cork back in the bottle the correct way (not upside down), and store the bottle upright in the refrigerator.