The Ultimate Wine Preserver – Repour

Dec 28, 2023 by Chef David

By Chef David

Are you reluctant to open a good bottle of wine on Shabbos without company? It means finishing the entire bottle yourself because it will not be the same quality next week. In general, wine lasts three to five days after it has been opened, before oxidation increases the levels of acetic acid which affects the taste, turning its flavors flat.

To extend the life of your wine, recork your bottle once you are finished drinking and store it in a cool and dark place, limiting its exposure to oxygen, heat, and light.  Even recorked with a wine stopper there will be air trapped in the bottle, and after a few days, the wine will begin to lose its brightness. To keep your wine fresh longer, you need to eliminate its exposure to oxygen.

The Science of Wine Preservation

Traditionally, the art of extending the life of an open bottle of wine is accomplished by removing the oxygen from the bottle.

One method is creating a vacuum, by pumping out the oxygen. This extends the wine by a few days since it cannot remove all the oxygen.

A second more complex method is replacing the oxygen with Argon, an inert gas, which will not affect the wines’ taste or smell. Since Argon is heavier than oxygen, it will displace the oxygen, forming a barrier between the wine and the air. The bottle must then be sealed tight to keep the inert gas in, and the oxygen out. This method extends the freshness of wine by one to four weeks.

The Ultimate Wine Stopper – Repour

We discovered a simpler solution, Repour, which looks like a blue wine stopper, but it is so much more powerful, it eliminates all the oxygen allowing you to keep an open bottle fresh for up to two months. Repour functions like an upgraded wine stopper. Before using it the first time you need to peel a metal tab from the wine-facing end of the stopper and then insert it into the bottle. Encased inside the Repour stopper is a packet of chemicals that binds with the oxygen. This reaction removes the oxygen from the bottle, as well as continually pulling dissolved oxygen from the wine. With no oxygen, your wine will stay fresh much longer.

You will know it is working when you remove the stopper and hear a woosh sound. Because Repour removes all the oxygen from the wine, they recommend giving the wine 15 minutes to reoxygenate after reopening, just like you would a new bottle. One Repour stopper can be used multiple times on the same bottle. It will keep a 750 ml bottle fresh for up to 2 months and can be recycled after you are done with the bottle.

Repour was invented by Tom Lutz, a chemist who enjoys relaxing with a glass of wine and found the gadgets sold to preserve wine too expensive, complicated, and only partially effective. No other wine preserver can remove dissolved oxygen from liquid wine or do it in such a simple way with no extra effort required.

Proof Positive

We conducted our own evaluation, leaving bottles of wine sitting at room temperature for weeks at a time before reopening them.  Every time we opened the Repour stopper we heard the hiss and found that the wine was just as good as it was when we first opened it.  We opened the same bottle multiple times and were greeted by the welcoming woosh, and the Repour continued to work until the bottle was empty.

Repour can be purchased online. This easy, effective wine saver removes any trepidation about opening ‘that’ fancy bottle. With Repour you can sip, enjoy, and save the rest for later.