[Don Plumley]

Lots of good suggestions already. Especially those about finishing the bottle!

Here's the summary: White wines, hours. Good Reds, maybe a day or two. I just shove the cork back in the wine, or use a stopper, and stick it in a cool place on the kitchen counter. If we don't finish it within a day or so, I pour it down the sink. Life is too short to drink spoiled wine.

Oxygen is essential to open up a wine - that's why you swirl it around a glass. I like seeing how the wine changes in the glass over the course of dinner. Some wines are "tight" - the aromas and flavors have yet to fully open up, and really benefit from a few minutes in a decanter to aerate. Decanters are underutilized.

But like so many other things, too much oxygen is a bad thing. We really protect against oxygen in the winemaking process. Once made, different people have differing levels of sensitivity to oxidation. Our winemaker has an amazing nose for oxidation. Different wines oxidize at different rates - big tannic reds oxidize much slower than fresh whites.

Oxidation is also a wine fault, usually caused by a bad closure (and that will get me on an entirely different discussion, so I'll stop there). If you are not sure what an oxidized wine tastes like, pour a glass and leave it out on the counter for a couple of days. Yuk. BTW, Madeira, Sherry and Tawny Ports get their character from Oxidation.

Anyway, the act of opening and pouring a bottle of wine introduces enough oxygen to for oxidation to start. So the only sure fire way to prevent oxidation is to use an inert gas to deliver the wine. $pendy though.

So the implication is that any of the other techniques: Vacuvin, Nitrogen layer or half-bottle really are not doing much to prevent oxidation since when you poured that first glass, oxygen was introduced into the wine. There are arguments that the vacuvin might actually damage the wine a bit by stripping out some of the aromatic components. And spraying the nitrogen to form a layer on the wine isn't really doing much since the O2 is already in the wine from pouring. I've just talked myself into throwing out our nitrogen and vacuvin...

The suggestions to re-cork the wine and stick in a cool place (or the fridge) are probably the best way to delay oxidation. Store the bottle standing up to reduce the air exchange surface.

BTW, wine in a box typically do not suffer from oxidation. The bag is an airtight closure and no air is introduced into the wine when it is poured. There are some better wines becoming available in a box.

And be cautious about ordering wines by the glass - ask if they were opened earlier in the day - not last night. If the bartender can't answer, reconsider.

Time to enjoy another glass!