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Comment by hanoz | Hacker News Reader

Title needs to be changed to "how long does a bottle of wine keep after it is opened", because I can assure you from long experience the answer to the titular question is: about an hour and a half.

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About a month or two, in my kitchen. I use a few splashes to deglaze pan sauces, or accelerate the caramelization of onions. I'm sure it's gone off by somebody's standards, but I get no complaints

I do the same, but I would not call that "wine" after a few days. It's effectively vinegar-in-waiting.

Indeed, it's a matter of perspective. I don't touch the stuff to my lips, but it's a great reagent

If kept at room temperature, sure, but it will take a good few weeks in a fridge.

I use wine to do the same, but I just finish off the bottle. Also get no complaints.

How much does it accelerate caramelization?

Red wine makes it look darker. Also, you may need some liquid to loose the onions from the pan that would burn otherwise (deglazing). So using red wine allows more heat and optically gets you there faster.

So you can get the right taste before you get the right optics?

The alcohol is great at dissolving sugars that are stuck to the pan -- by doing so near the burning point of sugar, you "rescue" the sugars from burning to carbon, et voila, caramelized sugars. Further, the steam breaks down the cell walls, freeing delicious juices for caramelization and breaking down the structure to improve heat transfer. You can get there low & slow, or you can add a few well timed splashes on medium high for nicely caramelized onions in minutes. It's a threshold game, and the closer you come to burning the pan, the darker onions get. Contrary to the sibling comment, I prefer white so I get clearer feedback about that threshold.

That's super good to know. Caramelizing onions takes forever

Not a wine drinker myself, but this is roughly what I was thinking when I read the title. My thought was it depends largely on how many friends you have over and whether there is good beer around to distract them.

This is very accurate estimate. Frankly, I very much doubt many people would leave half empty wine bottle for weeks or months.

If you plan to cook with the remaining wine, it will remain viable longer for that purpose than for drinking. At least, according to the internet.

Just put it in the fridge. But even vinegar is useful.

A few parties I've been to have had several bottles of partially-remaining wine left over - unless you drink a moderate amount daily, it could easily take a couple weeks to get through. For that kind of scenario, you're left with options like "drink it all ASAP", or "drink a little, dump the rest", or "find some way to make it last longer".

Or if you opened something far off your normal preference, such as a bottle of white for me.

I do, often, unfortunately. It gets poured down the drain.

This is why I avoid buying beer in growlers. My wife and I just don't drink enough to kill a bottle before it's done. If I have friends over, it goes fast, but that's not really a thing right now.

They do make cans of wine... I know it's a crazy idea, but my friend who likes wine loves the single serving size.

I thought the 750ml bottle was a single serving size?

For a joke, my family got me a 750ml glass a couple of Christmases ago. I have yet to use it.

750 ml has nothing to do with how much wine people are expected to drink at once; it's an artifact of glass-blowing. A typical medieval glass-blower's lungs allowed them to create bottles of 700-800 ml with a single long breath.

That's a very cool piece of useless trivia. Thanks.

Is there something about glass blowing which makes it air-inefficient? My vague recollection from my time as a low brass player in college is that the prof's lung capacity measuring apparatus (yes, really) put most of us in the 3-4L range, with one outlier around 5L. Granted, we were trained for such magnificent feats of blowing hot air, but so too must glass blowers be.

It is more about the pulmonary strength needed to start the bubble in sufficent glass for the bottle size.

I'd guess that it's also relates to a pressure that glass blower had to create. Then the total volume would be less than free volume.

Sounds like something you should aspire to :)

I can drink a bottle myself lunch to bed on a weekend, but not every weekend.

In Oregon at least yes. https://www.cannedoregon.com/

Pretty sure that isn't the only brand I have seen.

Huh. I didn't realize this was a local/ Oregon thing and had assumed it was country-wide.

Bag-in-box style of containers are pretty good regarding oxydation. Up to 6 weeks after opening it says on the label.

A bottle is obviously better long term.

There's perfectly good bagged wine in France, but they get pretty bad rep in other countries, it's often terrible wine in these boxes sadly

That's very wasteful. Use it for cooking; for that purpose it can be kept for months and even mixed with other same-color wines. There are plenty of dishes that can "pop" with just a bit of extra wine here and there.

I do, as a bottle of wine for one is too much so I keep it in the fridge for weeks and drink half a cup or less once in a while.

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