Could I just have half a glass of wine? Twice a week?

May 18, 2018 9:39 PM

I'm not a heavy drinker, but I enjoy wine for the nuances of its flavor. However, my partner doesn't drink wine at all and I'm a very cheap date who gets drunk on a dime. How can I drink wine at home on occasion without pouring out most of the bottle?

Basically, my holy grail of wine is a can of beer or cider, except containing red/white/rose wine in the $15-30 price range of quality.

What kind of wine can I buy which can reasonably consumed at a rate of 1 glass per week? If the answer is boxed wine, can you recommend specific ones that actually taste good? I like French-style GSM red blends the best, but I'm not going to be too picky here.

posted by serelliya to Food & Drink (27 answers total)

I'm not much of a wine person, but my roommate likes to buy what she calls "baby wine" which are basically individual bottles of wine about the size of a beer bottle. She'll stash two of them in her purse for a BYOB party and she's good for the night. Maybe look around for those at your local grocery/liquor/wine/etc store?
posted by Urban Winter at 9:48 PM on May 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

There is the option of the Coravin, which uses a needle to extract the wine without damaging the cork and then fills the remaining space with inert argon gas to prevent oxidation. It apparently works quite well, though may be too $$ for your application.
posted by Maecenas at 9:54 PM on May 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

Best answer: I find the canned wines by Union Wine Company very drinkable. I also think Bota Box wine makes for a great, decent house wine. Canned wine is portable and easy to store, boxed wine lasts for months. I believe each can is about 2 glasses, FWIW, so you may will find you’re wasting some. Worth trying and experimenting with, though!
posted by pecanpies at 10:10 PM on May 18, 2018 [6 favorites]

Best answer: Much more reasonably priced than the Coravin is the Vacuvin.
We've had ours for years, I don't drink at all, and my wife drinks a glass every week or two. She has never complained about the wine degrading much even after a few months of storage (in the fridge once opened) though we often stock cheap wine.
This way though, you can buy whatever bottles you want.
posted by birdsquared at 10:11 PM on May 18, 2018 [6 favorites]

Bota Box wines. They’ve got a couple of red blends, a cab sav...happy tasting!
posted by pecanpies at 10:13 PM on May 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Underwood has a rosé in a can that is much better than it should be. I have seen it at Nugget and Cost Plus. I forget the cost, but I think it's around $6/can.
posted by sacrifix at 10:15 PM on May 18, 2018 [5 favorites]

Best answer: I like the Underwood canned pinot noir. It's about 2 glasses worth and near me available at Trader Joe's.
posted by kbuxton at 10:15 PM on May 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

Freeze the remaining wine in a freezer bag and use it for cooking.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:20 PM on May 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

Have you seen these Simpler Wines / Too Uncanny wines at Trader Joe's?
posted by batter_my_heart at 10:44 PM on May 18, 2018

Best answer: It looks like you're in the Bay Area, so check out this at the nearest K&L wines. It's a $25 box (used to be $20) that gives you 3L of Friulano. Stick it in the fridge, and it keeps for months. I wouldn't say it's up there with every $30 bottle, but it's better than it has any right to be, and the folks at the wine shop sing its praises.

They also have a a red in the same packaging, but I've never tried it.
posted by zachlipton at 11:02 PM on May 18, 2018

I also like the Underwood wine, but the cans might be a little much for you--it's two big glasses; they describe a can as "a full half-bottle." I got these little baby cans from Coppola and they're more like one glass. Trader Joe's has both sizes of cans, too--big Underwood sized ones and smaller ones. The small ones at TJ are actually spritzers, which might be even better for you as the alcohol content is lower.
posted by assenav at 11:13 PM on May 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Bota box is pretty good; we’ve also had pretty good luck with Black Box Wines.
posted by leahwrenn at 11:29 PM on May 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

You could try the inert gas stuff (Private Preserve). I only drink wine on occasion (I use the gas on spirits that I keep around for years) but it seems to be fairly effective. You could also pre-emptively decant the original bottle into smaller bottles; note that it can be hard to thoroughly wash all the flavors out of a bottle for reuse but it may be less of an issue if you generally stick to one style of wine.
posted by Standard Orange at 1:35 AM on May 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Vina Borgia Garnacha is an excellent (and affordable!) boxed wine; if you like GSMs, I think you'll enjoy it. (Though do note: alcohol content is on the higher end; you may want to take that into account when pouring.)
posted by halation at 6:12 AM on May 19, 2018

Honestly there are lots of wines that are stable enough to last a week. Especially younger reds raised in stainless steel. Usually they will actually improve for a day or two after opening.
posted by JPD at 6:13 AM on May 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

For bottles of wine, the Vacu-vin mentioned above is really great. You are pulling all of the air out of the bottle, so it is as if it has never been corked.

For box wines, Black Box is decent and inexpensive. In our area, they have the big "four bottles of wine" in one box for ~$20 and also have a one bottle serving.

Also, the idea mentioned above of freezing the rest and using for cooking is genius.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 6:15 AM on May 19, 2018

My dad cares a lot about wine and his technique is to pour what he wants to save into another container, I believe a small screw top wine bottle, so it's full to the brim. That prevents oxidation. Then he stores it in the fridge.
posted by carolr at 6:54 AM on May 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: A lot of the solutions presented are going to work pretty well for a week, but if you're drinking half a glass twice a week, we're talking about a month or so to get through a bottle. My gut feeling is that your best bet is to find some boxed wine that suits you well, but I don't know if there's anything that's equivalent to the good side of the $15-30/bottle range.

One suggestion that hasn't been raised is to try port or sherry. They are fortified wines, meaning that they have a bit of brandy put in them to stop fermentation, and the result is that they are a bit more alcoholic than most wine (15-18%). However, that slightly higher alcohol content protects them from degrading quickly, and a bottle (usually only 375-500 mL) can easily last in the fridge for the duration you'd need. Both are basically intended to be drunk slowly from a small glass. Sherry, in particular, has tons of variety and flavor within its category, ranging from sweeter types with toffee and dried fruit flavors, to totally dry types with herbaceous, nutty, and saline qualities. It's also relatively cheap for the quality, provided you get to a good wine store that has some options.
posted by Schismatic at 7:25 AM on May 19, 2018 [5 favorites]

Best answer: Nthing Bota Box, specifically their Redvolution. I think with cheaper wines, blends are a better idea as the vintner has more flexibility to ensure quality and flavor.
posted by slipthought at 7:25 AM on May 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

Box wines are ideal for your purpose, because the liquid in the box is never exposed to air until you dispense it. There's a thick plastic bag full of wine inside the box that "deflates" when you dispense wine. No air goes back inside, so no oxygen is admitted to start aging the wine. Follow recommendations above -- I just added this answer to explain why they'll work for you.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:26 AM on May 19, 2018 [2 favorites]

Decant the bottle into a Platypus soft bottle or similar, cap it loosely, and then purge it of air by squeezing until a few drops of wine overflow. This (mostly) recreates the airless environment inside a "box" of wine. Store it in the refrigerator to slow oxidation even further.
posted by meaty shoe puppet at 9:28 AM on May 19, 2018

You could consider buying some half-size bottles of wine, so 375ml instead of 750ml. Here are some.
posted by AppleTurnover at 10:26 AM on May 19, 2018

Best answer: I'm also not a big drinker and rely on canned wine (yes, Underwood is good, but big - I typically drink a little and then have some leftover for cooking that keeps fine in a jar in the fridge for a couple of days) and champagne (the Sofia cans from Coppola mostly). There's a pretty decent selection of single serving wine at my local liquor store (the smaller, stop in after work stores tend to have a better selection of tiny wines than the big warehouse-y stores).

You can also get some really fancy wines as half bottles. They're a little bigger than your ideal drinking pace supports, but having a glass or two and then saving the last bit for cooking if it starts going off would work fine.
posted by snaw at 10:54 AM on May 19, 2018

Decant the wine into a serving size containers, with little air in the container. put in the back of the fridge. No air means a lot less degradation of the wine. Fridge means any chemical reactions are slowed. I enjoy wine sometimes, and am able to drink a bottle over a couple weeks, but my standards are pretty low, so it just stays on the counter. I like risotto and that will use up a fair bit of wine, or some variety of chicken-wine-mushrooms braise-y thing to use leftover wine.
posted by theora55 at 4:47 PM on May 19, 2018

This is a little outside the box, but have you considered trying to develop a taste for beer? There's just as much depth and complexity and variety in beer as there is in wine, and even the good stuff often comes in single-serving containers. (Also, fancy beer is priced like mid-range wine so that's nice. Not a lot of $90 four-packs out there.)

If wine is your thing but you find the idea of exploring beer interesting, you might look into starting with a style like Bière de Champagne which is a newer style that blends techniques and ingredients from the wine world with those of the beer world. Personally I've recently been enjoying Prost Secco which is brewed with champagne grapes and is definitely a very winey beer that's a lot of fun and (I think) absolutely delicious.

Just a thought.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:31 PM on May 19, 2018

Best answer: What about rebottling the wine in little bottles?
posted by hannahelastic at 2:59 AM on May 20, 2018

Best answer: Nothing can touch the utility of the Coravin in your situation. It should be spelled out that the Model One is identical to the others in every way except for its plastic body.

The user mentioning port and sherry is also spot on. If you were intrigued, also examine Madeira, the pound-for-pound longevity champ of fortified wines.
posted by yumpsuit at 5:36 AM on May 31, 2018