Sometimes, you just can’t finish your bottle of wine. Unfortunately, with many varieties, the wine only lasts a few days after you’ve uncorked it. So if you want to save your nightcap, can you recork wine?
As it turns out, yes! You can re-cork wine, but there’s a key trick to it. You need to place the “stained” side of the cork back into the bottle.
When reinserting, you might want to use the “clean” side of the cork thinking it’s more sanitary. Actually, the clean side could be contaminated with bacteria. Since it had access to the open air, it was exposed to more contaminants. That means upon recorking, it can taint the taste of your wine and dilute its freshness.
Although it might be harder to shove the “tainted” side back into the bottle, that’s really your best option. By using the “tainted” part of the cork, you’re re-corking the side that has already been exposed to the wine.
If the wine cork happens to be damaged, you’re not out of luck in saving the rest of your wine. You can also wrap wax paper around the broken cork before re-inserting it into the wine bottle.
Once your bottle of wine is empty, don’t toss that cork just yet because you can reuse wine corks in all sorts of ways around your house.
