Let’s face it: most small bottle or single serving wines in the US are intended for airplanes, sporting events or minibars and are not the best wines you could be drinking. However! Those adorable .187 liter small wine bottles (called a Piccolo) are great and are reusable… Just rinse them out, let them dry, and then refill them with your own high quality wine! Let me break down the reasons why you should go buy a couple of 4 packs for yourself and give this a try.
Why re-bottle into small wine bottles?
If you are not going to finish the bottle you are opening, transferring the extra to small wine bottles can make a lot of sense. Due to minimized surface area, the wine will store better and last longer because it will reduce wine oxidation. By pouring the wine out of the original bottle, you have functionally decanted away any sediment. And you can have a controlled inventory of single servings, meaning you can have a larger variety of wines open at any one time.
Wine Shelf Life 1-2 Weeks+
The goal is to reduce the amount of time the wine touches air and also to slow the oxidation process. As soon as you open up a large bottle of wine, immediately transfer whatever you don’t plan on using to the small wine bottles and fill them right to the top (you want as little air in the bottle as possible). Then make sure to store them in the refrigerator. Under these conditions your wine should last 1-2 weeks (..and possibly longer, depending on the wine!). Be sure to review how to store open wine for a few additional tips.
Multi-Course Picnics!
Lightweight, single servings let you switch up the offerings. 4 small wine bottles will weigh less than one glass 750ml bottle and are much easier to carry in a picnic basket.
Single Man’s Burden
Single people drink wine too, and a regular 750ml bottle is a lot to drink by your sad lonesome self. When you open that new bottle, pour yourself a glass and transfer the remainder into 3 clean and sanitary .187 L screw top bottles. You can even have a white and a red with dinner without the guilt of all those open bottles.
Anatomy of the .187 L bottle
Because these wines are primarily manufactured for airplanes and sporting events, they are increasingly made out of PET instead of glass. PET(polyethylene terphthalate) is one of the highest quality plastics available and contains no BPA. This makes them significantly lighter than their glass counterparts. The aluminum screw tops have small seals in them that you need to be delicate with during cleaning. The life of this seal is the effective life of the bottle, and you should get many uses out of a bottle before you need to discard it.