What are your choices when you have a partial bottle of wine left from dinner or a gathering?

It does seem a waste to throw it down the drain. Not only wine is being wasted as it gurgles away through the pipes but your money as well as the talent and hard work of the winemaking team is wasted.

You do have alternatives to tossing the wine out. Wine can be used in cooking. To preserve the wine for cooking pour it into ice cube trays to freeze. The next time you are cooking perhaps spaghetti sauce toss a couple of the wine cubes into the sauce for additional flavor.

If you plan to drink the wine in a day or two, use a bottle stopper and store it in the refrigerator until needed.

Some winemakers suggest using a wine pump. The purpose of the wine pump is to remove air from the bottle creating a vacuum. According to the recent Messina Hof newsletter, most wine pumps are able to preserve the wine for up to two weeks.

What do you do with your leftover wine?

Cheers! Kathy