How Long Does an Open Bottle of Wine Last?

With the holidays, it's easy to open a bottle of wine for guests, but not finish it. So it's important to have a general idea of how long a wine will stay fresh, after it's been opened.

A young, crisp white wine has a lot of volatile flavors that will dissipate quickly. Properly resealed and stored in a cool place, most can probably survive overnight, but the wine can get "flabby" if stored for much longer than that.

An aged white wine should be a bit more balanced, with a backbone of oak. With the crispness already aged out of the wine, it can hold up to a few more days in the fridge.

Much in the same vein, a young red wine has a bit more stable flavors, and will last a few days when stored properly. An aged red wine might hold up even longer.

Dessert wines have remarkably stable flavors, and can store for weeks in optimal conditions. Useful, as its a bit more difficult to drink an entire bottle in one evening without the help of a large group of friends.

While most connoisseurs would insist that a wine should be drunk right away (after its given the appropriate amount of time to breathe), most of us will still enjoy that bottle the next night, or the night after, and there is no sense in letting a good wine go to waste!