I have a bottle of wine that came with a screw on cap. I drank some, now it has sat for over a year.
Is it still good, or should I throw it out? It wasn’t expensive but I’d rather not throw it out unless I need to.
It is 11% ABV, so that should be enough to keep anything from growing in it.
A year?! Once opened a bottle should be ideally consumed in no more than 24 hours and after a week it’s gonna be a shadow of it’s former self.
11% ABV wine can start growing. Give it a sniff test to start.
The odds are after a year, it is trash though. Not even fit for cooking, never mind drinking straight.
To Zoid: There are ways to keep wine for 3-5 days once opened, but it involves either a vacuum stopper or inert gas. If you’re a wine snob with a fully developed pallet, even this is probably not good enough but for the rest of us it works pretty well.
Fair enough. Its a cheap wine and I don’t mind throwing it out.
However, are they talking about the wine going bad and making you sick, or it just losing its flavor?
After a week, flavor usually. After a year, fair chance of either making you sick or at least it having become crappy vinegar.
Ooo ooo oo! The only factoid I know about wine and nobody’s posted it.
Vin = French word for wine
Aigre = French for bitter
Go to a French supermarket and search for the cheapest bottle of wine they have, and you will, indeed, find that it is more suited to sprinkling on chips than for drinking.
After a year most of the alcohol will have evaporated out and what’s left would probably make a good breeding ground for all kinds of nasties.
At home, we often drink half a bottle one evening and finish the next day with no noticeable bad effect. After three days, it loses a good deal of its flavour, sometimes to the point of being unpleasant - not even suitable for cooking. Fortified wines like port, will last longer, but only a week or two I think.
If you know ahead you can’t finish the whole bottle (even with a vacuum plug) in a few days, an old household tip (which I haven’t tried myself) is to make ice cubes in the freezer: you then put several of them in a Sauce when cooking, instead of a shot of wine.
Sure, looses some flavour - but that happens during cooking anyway - but no nasties can grow in freezer, and it won’t turn vinegar quickly, either.
I would say the phrase “screw on cap” would answer any questions about wine snobbery. Most likely it’s like my analogy about coffee on the burner for a long time. Cheap-ass diner coffee falls from 3 to a 1 while barista coffee falls from 8 to a 4. The latter’s fall is much more noticeable.
I remember the remarks a French oenophile said when pressed about the quality of California vintages vs. French. He said well, no, the best California wine is not equal to the best French wine, but your typical Frenchman drinks plonk, and the average California wine is far superior to the average French wine.
After a year, it’s all vinegar.
On the contrary, except for the highest end wineries, a large and increasing percentage of fine wines are moving to screw on capsules, because they preserve the wine significantly better than corks.
Yes, if you’re keeping a bottle for many decades, then a cork is the way to go, but for wine that you’re going to drink within a year or three, give me a screw cap every time.
Veering off topic, but I recently picked up a few bottles of a Sicilian wine that was capped with a glass stopper with a small rubber gasket. I’d never seen that before. Took me a minute or so to figure out what it was and how to open the bottle.
Is this the next thing…or just a one off anomaly?
This. 24 hours with a tight seal and a fair bit left in the bottle is my rule of thumb. I admit that on rare occasions I’ve had a bottle of particularly nice wine that was left over for one reason or another that I’ve pushed to 48 hours, and it was still quite enjoyable though most definitely suffering from oxidation. A less than stellar wine, especially if there is only a few inches left in the bottle, isn’t worth keeping at all.
And after a year of being opened, I’d use HazMat equipment to dispose of it! 
Not seriously, but I sure wouldn’t drink it!
The vacuum systems are imperfect, but I had a very simple inert-gas “system” for a while that was nothing more than a can of argon gas that you squirted into the bottle. I was sold on it because one of the local wineries was using it in their tasting room. I think it worked well but it was expensive to use on a routine ongoing basis. The vacuum systems have the advantage that there’s no ongoing cost.
The association of screw-tops with low-end wines has not been true for a great many decades. There are some wine regions like California that seem to avoid them for marketing/image reasons, and I rarely see them on French wines, but some really fine wines from Australia, Canada, and many European countries come with screw-tops. The only real problem with screw-tops is that a snooty sommelier can’t make a big deal of uncorking it at the table with a snooty flourish!
Nope, exactly opposite. A quality screw cap will keep wine better for longer, especially if you’re going to lay up a bottle for decades. Except for the ceremony, there are essentially no advantages to cork.
I was referring to the snob, not the wine. I’ve two bottles of capped wine on the counter now, and not a cork in sight.
You can simply take a sip and let your taste buds decide. I’d brace myself, though.
Yeah, I wouldn’t approach a bottle of wine open for a year any more than I would drink from milk that sat for a year.
Another way to preserve wine for a longer period of time once it is opened is to freeze it. Of course, never freeze a full bottle of wine, or you will have ice wine mixed with glass and a mess. But if it is half empty it will freeze well and be good for a month or so. When you thaw it there will be some sediment at the bottom of the bottle, but not too worry.