October 3, 2018Drew (The Wine Wankers)

We drank a $50 bottle of wine that was open for 9 months, and this $3 gadget made it drinkable

Yesterday I drank a bottle of red wine that I opened 9 months ago – and it was still fresh as a daisy! How can this be?

You know that thing called left over wine – yeah, we don’t either. But just say you did. If you leave it for more than a day, it’s gonna start to deteriorate as oxygen starts to change the wine’s flavour profile. After a week, it’s probably going to become undrinkable. And if it’s an expensive wine you’re tipping down the sink, well, that’s just a crying shame!

It doesn’t have to be this way however, because this week we concluded an experiment that completely blew our mind.

Nine months ago I was sent the Repour wine stopper to test drive – I was told it would completely stop the wine degradation process. I was dubious at first, as I’ve tested heaps of gadgets like vacuum pumps over the years with varying degrees of success. These reduce the oxygen in the closed bottle, but it doesn’t eliminate it completely.

Repour’s marketing promised it would keep one bottle of wine fresh until the last glass. But how?! Hidden inside the plastic cork is an ‘agent’ that gobbles up any oxygen inside the unused bottle once it is sealed with the Repour cork. It’s said to bring the level of oxygen in the air down below 0.05% and the dissolved oxygen in the wine to less than 0.03 ppm (the makers say that’s pretty much removing ALL the oxygen)!

At the same time I received my Repour cork samples, I also received double samples of Nebbiolo from the northern Italian winery, Tenute Sella 1871 (cost, 40,00 € each). Often wineries will send two bottles of the same wine in case one of the wines is corked. What a perfect opportunity I thought to taste one bottle now, cork it up with Repour, and taste it further down the track alongside a freshly opened bottle.

This experiment was only expected to last 2 weeks. Unfortunately work took my focus away from the project and the Repour experiment got locked away in a cupboard, forgotten.

Nine months later it was rediscovered. ‘Surely it cant be any good. Even the instructions suggest ‘weeks or months’, and this has been almost a year!’

Guess what – it worked!! Watch the video above as Ged and I taste the wine in real time. We were genuinely shocked. There was absolutely no difference between the wine that was freshly opened, and the half drunk bottle that was open 9 months early. This gadget is a bloody miracle!

The verdict and the price

My biggest hesitation in recommending this product is that it’s single use plastic.  Once it’s been used on one bottle, you have to throw it out. That said, you can open that one bottle a couple of times and the contents should remain fresh.

While it is made from recyclable materials, because it is so small, many recycling facilities filter it out and it gets transferred to waste. In countries like Sweden where all plastic gets recycled, regardless of size, it’s a much easier recommendation. When you look at the price of the cork, and compare it to the expensive wine  you’re ‘holding in limbo’, you can see how it pays for itself, because this stopper works brilliantly.

Repour cost around US$3 as a single, US$10 for a 4 pack, US$22 for a 10 pack, and US$130 for a 72 pack

In Australia you can buy Repour via www.mywinesaver.com.au. For everywhere else in the world, go to www.repour.com

25 comments

  1. Hi Drew, Hope you doing well. Any chance of getting a vSpin post on your IG ? Nice story of for Repour Have a great evening.

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  2. The price isn’t unreasonable, unless you’re using it on a $7.99 bottle of wine (yes, some of us do still buy wine on sale). For me, however, this product would likely be useless as I seldom have wine left for more than a day or two – and the higher the price of the wine, the more likely it won’t be left over. I can’t imagine an opened bottle of wine lying around for 9 months, unless it wasn’t drinkable to begin with.

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  3. I am the epitome of the expression, “what is this thing you call leftover wine?” Full disclosure: I buy $7.99 wine (or thereabouts) on a regular basis. There are some really good, really inexpensive wines out there. So I don’t think a single use item would be a good bet for me. Then again, for the occasional splurge wine, it would be good insurance, because, you know, shit happens. A winery lady told me once that when the wine turned to vinegar, you could use it in salad dressing. Have you ever tried that?

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  6. Wow that’s hard to believe that it works so well. Wonder what the “magic inside” is doing? It’s a bummer that it’s a single-use plastic item. I think you have to weigh that against just finishing the bottle today or tomorrow with maybe a little oxidation to put up with.

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  8. Thanks for sharing your experience Drew.

    I gave them a try as well. Few hesitations/concerns:

    1) There’s obviously some kind of chemical in the stopper. So it must be reacting with air and likely even the wine. So that’s a little concerning.

    2) The effectiveness no doubt decreases every time you open the bottle. So the first time you use it, it’s got maximum reactivity, but the second time you recork it, you now have even more air but even less reactive chemicals in the stopper.

    3) Obviously this is aimed solely at casual home users as it won’t scale in trade scenarios, e.g. serving large numbers of wines by the glass every day.

    Personally, I like using Coravin for wines that I may want to taste over months or years and then Winesave for keeping any leftover wines for days or weeks (both use argon gas – vs chemicals).

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  10. Hi Drew, this item seems very interesting to me as a wine importer. I taste wines with retailers and generally do not polish off entire bottles right away. I would like to use the same bottles several times. Up until now I use the Coravin, but the repour has some potential advantages – for example not needing to fuss around with the instrument while you’re talking about the wine. How would you compare the two systems in terms of effectiveness?

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  11. Very cool! I absolutely HATE old wine. I want to die when someone brings out a red at a party and you know they’ve had it open for months. Maybe I’l start giving Repour as gifts so I don’t to worry about this. Or find new friends. LOL.

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  13. I was thrilled with this device when I was introduced to it at the 2017 Wine Bloggers Conference. Like others, I ‘m bothered by the single use aspect as well (and glad to see that I;m not the only one!. I was given some samples but haven’t used them. I love the idea of your experiment and what it proves. With a really nice wine that you don’t want to finish drinking immediately or you want to save to share with a friend, this could be worthwhile for special occasions and uses.

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  14. Wow, I never though wine open for that long would be salvageable. I remember a really good bottle was given by my uncle from Napa, but we tried taking a few sips every now and then which ended up getting left out for quite some time. There are dozens of London date guide for escort that would recommend just getting a new bottle, but I’m glad I landed on your blog to find out about this product.

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  16. What a shame it’s single use! A brilliant idea though, I normally use Vacu Vin but I find it still only keeps the wine for a few days/maybe a week! On an expensive bottle of wine this would be a God-send. Let’s hope they one day develop them into multi-use!

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