An opened bottle of wine lasts three to five days for most still styles, one to three days for a sparkling wine, and several weeks for a fortified wine such as port. What sets the window is the amount of air the wine meets from the moment the cork comes out, not the vintage on the label.
The short answer, style by style
- Most still wines keep three to five days sealed and cold, and still taste right on day three. Sparkling keeps one to three days under a proper stopper, never under a loose closure.
- Two spoilages run at once on different clocks: oxidation dulls the fruit within days, acetic bacteria turn the wine sour over weeks. Neither makes it unsafe to drink.
- Cold slows both, so store an opened red in the fridge whatever temperature you mean to serve it at afterwards.
- Moving what is left into a clean half bottle costs nothing and beats a vacuum pump, because it removes the air instead of treating it.
What actually happens once the cork comes out
Two separate processes start the moment air reaches the surface, and confusing them is why advice on this subject contradicts itself so often.
The first is oxidation, a purely chemical reaction. Oxygen converts part of the ethanol into acetaldehyde, the compound responsible for the bruised apple and dried nut character of a tired glass, while the fruit esters that carry aroma break down. This is fast. On a delicate white you can follow it hour by hour on the second evening.
The second is bacterial. Acetic acid bacteria, present in tiny numbers in almost every wine, also need oxygen, and they convert ethanol into acetic acid and ethyl acetate: vinegar, and the solvent note of nail varnish. This is slow, and it is what eventually makes a forgotten half bottle genuinely undrinkable rather than merely flat.
Both feed on the same thing, the headspace. A bottle three quarters empty holds roughly three times the air of one that has lost a single glass, which is why the last third always dies faster than the first. Everything that follows is a way of shrinking that headspace, chilling it, or replacing it.
How long each style keeps, in practice
These windows assume the wine is resealed and kept cold. They give a drinking window rather than a shelf life, and mark the point at which most tasters notice a clear loss, not a hard expiry.
| Style | Sealed and chilled | What fades first |
|---|---|---|
| Sparkling | 1 to 3 days | The mousse, well before the flavour |
| Light white and rose | 3 to 5 days | Aromatics, then the bite of acidity |
| Full bodied white, oak aged | 3 to 5 days | Freshness, leaving the oak exposed |
| Light red, Pinot Noir or Gamay | 3 to 5 days | Red fruit, which turns dusty |
| Tannin rich red, Cabernet or Syrah | 4 to 6 days, often better on day two | Little, until it collapses at once |
| Fino and manzanilla sherry | About a week | The saline, yeasty lift |
| Port, oloroso and other fortified | Several weeks to a few months | Very little, thanks to the alcohol |
Style decides more than price does. The grapes and the winemaking set how much natural protection a wine carries: a Chardonnay aged in oak has already met a controlled dose of oxygen during its aging and shrugs off a little more, while an unoaked, lighter white has nothing standing between its aromatics and the air. Sweet wines hold well because sugar and acidity both slow the reactions, and a rose belongs with the light whites whatever its colour suggests.
Why a tannic red often improves overnight
Tannin and the pigments it binds to are themselves antioxidants: they take the oxygen before the fruit does. A young Bordeaux or a Northern Rhone Syrah frequently tastes rounder on the second evening than on the first, which is the same softening a carafe produces in an hour. If you want that effect deliberately rather than by accident, our guide to decanting and when it helps covers which bottles repay it.
Cold is the cheapest preservation method there is
Chemical reactions run faster as temperature rises, and a common laboratory rule of thumb puts the rate at roughly double for every ten degrees Celsius. The practical consequence is that the fridge buys you more time than any accessory, and it applies to red wine exactly as it does to white.
Put it in the fridge door as soon as you have finished pouring, and take the red out thirty to forty five minutes before the next glass. Serving a red at fridge temperature is a real mistake; leaving it on a warm kitchen counter overnight is a bigger one. Our page on serving temperature by style gives the ranges to bring it back to.
Two conditions matter alongside the cold. Keep the wine dark and keep it still: light drives the same reactions, so a cool cupboard beats a sunlit shelf for the hour between pouring and putting it away, and a wine shaken about meets more air than one left alone.
Note that this is about an open bottle, over days. Long term conditions for sealed bottles are a different question, and we cover them separately under keeping a cellar in good order.
Hand pumps: what they remove, and what they take with them
The rubber stopper and hand pump sold in every wine shop draws part of the headspace out through a one way valve. It is not a true vacuum, and it cannot be: the seal leaks slowly and the pressure equalises within a day or two. On an everyday red or a neutral white it still keeps the wine fresh for a useful extra day, for a few euros, which makes it the best value item in the category.
It has two real limits. Reducing the pressure above the surface pulls volatile compounds out of the liquid along with the air, so an aromatic white such as a Sauvignon Blanc, a Riesling or a Gewurztraminer can come back noticeably quieter. And it must never be used on a sparkling wine, where lowering the pressure strips the dissolved carbon dioxide, which is precisely what you were trying to keep. A sprung wine stopper that clamps on the lip does the opposite job and is the right tool there, as we note on our guide to French sparkling wine.
Inert gas: a blanket instead of a vacuum
The alternative is to keep the air out rather than pull it out. A short spray of argon, or of an argon and nitrogen blend, lays a layer of inert gas over the surface before you reseal. Argon is denser than air, which is why it settles and stays put for long enough to matter.
The science behind it is not complicated: the gas is chemically unreactive, so it occupies the space oxygen would otherwise fill. That is the whole of what it preserves, and it is enough.
It adds nothing to the flavour, takes nothing out, and works on aromatic whites where a pump does not. A canister costs a few euros and holds enough for dozens of uses, so the cost per bottle is a matter of cents. The one thing it does not do is seal: the gas is useless if the closure afterwards is loose.
The needle system: pouring without opening at all
A needle device, of which the Coravin is the best known, takes a different approach entirely. A hollow needle passes through the closure, argon pushes the liquid up and out, and the natural cork reseals behind the needle when it is withdrawn. The wine never meets a meaningful volume of air, so the remainder keeps for a month or more rather than days.
The constraints are worth knowing before you buy. It was designed for natural cork; a screw cap or a synthetic closure needs the maker's own adapter. The device itself is a real investment, and each argon capsule adds a running cost of roughly a euro per capsule spread over several pours. And a closure weakened by a previous extraction is best not travelled with.
Which method suits which bottle
- A weeknight bottle you will finish tomorrow. The fridge alone. Anything else is spending money on a problem you do not have.
- An aromatic white over three or four days. Inert gas, because the pump costs you the aromatics you are trying to protect.
- A serious bottle you want to pour by the glass over weeks. The needle system, and only then does its price make sense.
The free measures that beat most devices
Before buying anything, exhaust the free ways to store opened wine. Pour the remainder into a clean half bottle and fill it to the base of the neck. Halving the volume roughly halves the surface in contact with air, and removing the headspace outright beats any attempt to treat it. A rinsed screw cap half bottle kept from a previous purchase does the job perfectly.
Keep the wine upright rather than on its side, which reduces the exposed surface. Push the cork back in the way it came out, wider end up, so the clean face meets the liquid. And ignore the old trick of dropping a teaspoon into the neck of a sparkling bottle: tests have repeatedly failed to find any effect, and a proper stopper costs less than the wine it saves.
Leftover wine stored upright in a smaller container, kept cold and away from the light, routinely outlasts the same wine left where it was poured from, with a gadget on top. The ranking is worth keeping in mind: shrinking the headspace beats treating it, storing it cold beats both, and nothing you do prevents oxidation outright. Every method here simply slows it down.
How to tell an opened wine has gone
Look before you smell. A red loses its purple edge and turns brick then brown at the rim; a white darkens towards gold and then amber. On the nose, the sequence runs from bruised apple and walnut, which is oxidation, to sharp vinegar and solvent, which is the bacteria. On the palate the fruit goes hollow while the acidity stands up bare.
The signs arrive in a fixed order, and knowing it saves a tasting: colour first, then the smell, then the palate. A wine that has oxidized but not yet spoiled is still worth cooking with, while one that has turned vinegary is only good for the pan. Nothing about that exposure makes it unsafe, so trust the sequence rather than a date on a note.
None of it is dangerous. A wine spoiled by air is unpleasant to drink, not harmful, and there is no health reason to be cautious with a bottle that has simply been open too long. Do not confuse it with a fault present from the start, which is a different diagnosis: our page on cork taint and the faults it is mistaken for sets them apart.
Questions we are asked about the half bottle left over
Does opened wine go bad, or does it just get tired?
Both, in that order. For the first week it gets tired: the aroma flattens and the fruit recedes, but the wine remains perfectly safe. Only after several weeks do acetic bacteria produce enough acid to make it genuinely spoiled rather than dull.
How long does red wine last after opening?
Three to five days in the fridge for a light red, four to six for a tannic one, counted from the evening you opened it. Tannin acts as a natural antioxidant, which is why a structured red survives longer than a delicate Pinot Noir.
How long does white wine last after opening?
Three to five days chilled and resealed, for crisp and oaked styles alike. Aromatic whites lose their perfume first, which makes the loss obvious earlier than in a red even though the chemistry runs at a similar pace.
Which wines keep longest once opened?
Fortified wines, by a wide margin. Port and oloroso hold several weeks to a few months because their alcohol content suppresses bacterial activity. Box wine is the other outlier: the pouch collapses as it empties, so no air enters and it keeps for weeks.
Should the bottle go back in the fridge even if I plan to finish it tonight?
Between courses it makes no difference. If more than two or three hours will pass, it does, and the cost of being wrong is nothing at all.
What to do with what is genuinely past drinking
A wine too tired to enjoy is rarely wasted. It deglazes a pan, builds a stock or a marinade for a food you were cooking anyway, and its lost aroma matters far less once it has been cooked. Freezing the remainder in an ice cube tray gives you measured portions for months of cooking, and it is the most useful thing to do with a last glass nobody wants.
If it has gone all the way to vinegar, it has simply finished a transformation that a vinegar maker would have charged for. Left in a jar with a loose cloth over it, it continues on its own. The only outcome worth avoiding is the one where a good wine sits forgotten on the counter for a week, and that is entirely a question of putting it away on the first evening.
