story published in the Santa Barbara News-Press on 11/24/16
The year’s most bountiful meal usually comes with one conundrum: how long can we make our leftovers survive? Your turkey dregs (and all the trimmings) are one thing – simply store properly and enjoy for days to come. But what about all that wine?
As you know,
there’s no wrong Thanksgiving wine. With
so many flavors and textures on the table, you can pretty much open whatever
you want – it’s bound to match something.
But wine in excess means you’re likely to have half-empty bottles on
Thanksgiving night. Wouldn’t it be nice
for it to still be drinkable when you have yet another
turkey-stuffing-and-cranberry sauce sandwich three days later?
At our
house, we’re never really concerned with preserving wine. The best way to ensure wine does not spoil is
to make sure there’s none left. Consider
that Tip #1.
Also, keep
your wine standing up, rather than on its side – that’ll minimize how much of
your wine’s surface area is exposed to oxygen, fresh wine’s biggest
culprit. And avoid temperature extremes,
especially heat (i.e., don’t keep your bottle by a window, where sunlight can
find it).
For other unique ways to lengthen your wine’s lifespan, I turned to a few friends who are in the business of making reds and whites last as long as possible. Restaurant and winery folks, mostly, like Stephanie Varner, who manages the Rusack Vineyards tasting room in Ballard Canyon. “Don’t forget to make ice cubes with leftover wine!” she told me. Love it.
Laura Booras,
general manager at Riverbench Winery, tells me that a wine’s age will make a
difference. “If a wine is aged, say more than 15 years, it will definitely show
signs of aging faster if you leave it open longer. In fact, many older wines
will lose their freshness, delicacy, and nuances overnight, so it’s best to
finish them the night you open them.”
And she has a warning for those who decant. “The surface area has been more exposed, so
it’s going to oxidize and age much more quickly.”
Riverbench runs tasting rooms in both Santa
Maria and Santa Barbara’s Funk Zone, where several commercial products have
proven successful, including vacuum seals.
“But what about bubbly?” I ask Booras, well aware of the winery’s
fabulous annual sparkling wine production.
She says she’s kept bubbles fresh for up to three days with a stopper
called Tablecraft 398, which you’ll find at the Riverbench tasting rooms and on
Amazon.
Tatiana Konovalov, assistant
food-&-beverage manager at Four Seasons Resort the Biltmore in Montecito,
touts this stopper, too. “It fully seals
the bottle, but be careful,” she says.
“It becomes pressurized!”
“If you consistently find yourself unable
to finish quality wines,” Konovalov adds, it may be worth investing in a Coravin
system, which can cost a couple hundred dollars. “It uses a sharp needle to puncture the cork
and uses argon capsules to pressurize and release wine,” she says. “This system can only be used on cork sealed
bottles and never on Champagne.”
Larry Schaffer, winemaker at Tercero Wines
in Los Olivos, eschews gadgets because “the best solutions to any problem are
the simplest.” He touts refrigeration. And, to minimize oxygen exposure, he tells
his wine club members to have screw-capped half-bottles handy at home. “The next time you’re not able to finish a
bottle, put what’s left into the 375-ml bottle and fill as much as you can,” he
says. “Your leftover wine will now be in
a vessel that has a lot less headspace – open air between the wine and the top
of the bottle – and will be under a much tighter closure.”
Tom Dolan manages a spectacular wine list
at his Toma Restaurant in Santa Barbara.
But at home, his wine preservation solution involves multiple bottles,
too. “I always marry one bottle to another and fill till it overflows
out the top, then seal it!” he says, thereby creating his own special blend.
I met Jon McDaniel when he ran the
program at the Los Olivos Café a few years ago.
These days, he’s beverage director and sommelier for LessLaw
Hospitality, the group that runs Chicago foodie hotspots like The Gage, Acanto,
Beacon Tavern, The Dawson and Coda di Volpe.
“Wine is a living, breathing thing, so the moment you open up the
bottle, the clock starts ticking,” he reminds me.
If you like big reds with your
Thanksgiving bird, like cabernet and zinfandel, you’re in luck. “The tannins and the higher alcohol are going
to help maintain the structure of the wine and keep the taste for a couple
extra days,” McDaniel says. So if your
last bottle is a light red, “like Beaujolais or pinot noir, it’s best to know you
only have a day or so left.”
In the rare occasion when I do have
to keep wine an extra day or two, my go-to solution is sticking the cork back
in. But not so fast, says McDaniel. “Put in the same end that was
touching the wine first. I have seen corks that didn't taint the wine
with TCA (a bacteria that will 'cork' the wine) initially. But when you put in the other end of the cork
first, you can come back the next day and have a corked or spoiled wine. So even though the cork will expand a bit, try
and put the wet end of the cork back in first.
And save your money on fancy wine stoppers with jewels or turkeys on
them, they just don't work.”
If
all else fails, refer back to Tip #1.
Happy
Thanksgiving!
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