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[Poll]

Wine you regret

I donate them to a church/synagogue potluck

23% (4)

I dump them out and leave the empties for recycling

23% (4)

I leave the full bottles out for neighborhood street people.

11% (2)

I forget them. My heirs will dump them out someday.

41% (7)

Total Votes : 17

(last vote on : 4/15/2024 7:48:51 AM)
(Poll will run till: -- )

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Wine you regret - 4/7/2024 10:12:49 AM

KPB

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All this talk about new cellars reminds me of bottles down in the cellar that are just not very good. Money wasted… I tend to ignore them, as if they weren’t there, but somehow they don’t go away. Hence my question: what do you do with them?

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/7/2024 10:36:48 AM

gbm

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Good question. I used to like Saxum. Now it’s just too heavy for me. I open a bottle now and then when friends or family that like heavier wines are over, but otherwise I consider them thermal mass.

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/7/2024 10:51:11 AM

Jenise

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#1! There are a lot of people out there who like anything that doesn't taste outright vile.

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/7/2024 10:52:54 AM

BobMilton

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For reds, make a nice beef stew. Unless they are really vile, beef stock covers a multitude of sins.

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/7/2024 10:57:05 AM

sastewart

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Luckily I don't have very many that I wouldn't want to drink. Having said that there are some done in a big, new world style that we don't drink much anymore. I tend to open those bottles with friends who still enjoy those wines.

Another option for an all purpose cellar thinner is a "Dead or Alive Party". For a proper party you need 6-8 adventurous wine people and 15 to 20 (or more) bottles of questionable wines done blind. This allows the group to pontificate as to their age and origin or perhaps suggest alternate uses for the wine. Either each person brings a few bottles or if someone has recently inventoried their cellar they may offer to host and supply all of the wines.

< Message edited by sastewart -- 4/7/2024 10:58:22 AM >

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/7/2024 1:45:33 PM

KPB

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Making a beef stew right now, in fact. Used 2/3 of a cup of a mediocre red.

In fact it’s the heirs thing that I’m thinking about. I can’t avoid imagining them drinking through my cellar someday. But mostly, they wouldn’t know which are great and which are the forgotten crud! So either I find a way to get rid of the bad ones, or my last thought as the light fades could be of those sad bottles waiting to be opened!

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/7/2024 2:21:35 PM

Echinosum

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You can cook with almost any bottle of wine, even with quite a few wine faults. Slow cooked casseroles are fine in corked wine, I can confirm after repeatedly doing it. Bottles you didn't like and sat opened for 3 weeks, they are fine. Even off-dry pink wines. My usual recipe for disposing of unwanted arrivals, mistakes and faulty bottles is Greek-style slow-cooked pork knuckle (alias hand) with onions, as found in Rick Stein's Venice to Istanbul cookbook. Any colour will do, and as you add honey, off-dry is fine. It only calls for 1/3 a bottle, but also asks for some water. But dishes like that are pretty approximate, so I use whatever I've got, up to a whole bottle, and hold the water if necessary. No one knows the difference after its been bubbling away for 5 hours.

The only bottles of wine that have gone down the sink are the ones I had which had a very severe mousey fault, those were so unbelievably horrible I thought it was too much of a risk to cook with them. And there was once a couple of very faulty bottles of red wine where all the colouring matter had fallen out, and left a clear, colourless liquid. Perhaps I wouldn't cook a meat dish in a bottle of Sauternes, though, but doubtless you could cook fruit in it. And you need to be a little careful what you do with very high acid wines like riesling, though coq or poulet au riesling is a French classic.

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/7/2024 2:27:50 PM

KPB

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@Echinosum, your comment strikes to the core of my stress point: am I really going to pull corks on a dozen or two dozen bottles and dump them? I’m unlikely to drink them.

My other idea is to take a rack and put a big label on it,”losers, drink at high risk of them being spoiled or simply, awful”. And then my bad bottles could migrate to this rack.

But does it make even a tiny bit of sense to do that?

I rarely cook with wine, so this 2/3 cup is probably it for two or three weeks. Plus, honestly, my go-to white cooking wine is Livingston Chablis Blanc. Stable for months in the in the fridge, dry, everything about it works for cooking. Whereas bad white wines often are weird cooking choices!

< Message edited by KPB -- 4/7/2024 2:32:02 PM >

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/7/2024 2:30:37 PM

KPB

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Dup

< Message edited by KPB -- 4/7/2024 2:31:12 PM >

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/7/2024 4:25:04 PM

Jenise

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I halfway agree with Echinosum--some wines I don't love to drink are suitable for cooking purposes. An oak bomb that I don't like but my nextdoor neighbor loves would do just fine in a stew. Flawed wines are another story, though, including corked.

Do want to mention, though, that lightly diluted wine is a good fertilizer for acid-loving plants like rhododendrons and camellias. I poured some just this morning on my blueberries.

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Post #: 10

RE: Wine you regret - 4/7/2024 5:34:36 PM

CranBurgundy

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"Decoy Bottles"

Meaning they're put in plain sight during parties for regular people to consume so they don't pour a huge glass of the expensive stuff and then go to dump it down the drain because it isn't sweet enough.

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/7/2024 5:52:09 PM

DoubleD1969

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There have been a dozen bottles that I later regretted buying. All of which were due to sub-par storage IMO. I’ve also bought wines specifically for cooking, mostly in the $10 range, and some of which were fine for drinking.

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/7/2024 6:39:12 PM

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No regerts, not even 07 CdP.
(en Magnum of course)

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/7/2024 8:58:13 PM

jmcmchi

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Jenise

Do want to mention, though, that lightly diluted wine is a good fertilizer for acid-loving plants like rhododendrons and camellias.

This is helpful. Thank you

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/8/2024 1:03:12 AM

nwinther

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I find someone who likes them and give it to them.

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/8/2024 1:18:07 AM

BenG

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I used to use red wine for stew but now I find white wine works much better for the type of stews I like to cook (goat, oxtail, lambneck). I'm probably limited to pasta sauce now.

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/8/2024 1:40:58 AM

Echinosum

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quote:

ORIGINAL: KPB
@Echinosum, your comment strikes to the core of my stress point: am I really going to pull corks on a dozen or two dozen bottles and dump them? I’m unlikely to drink them.

I rarely cook with wine...

I see, you have the problem in quantity. How very unfortunate. Most of my inopportune bottles, so bad I cook with them, are ones that Arrive With Other People as singlets, and the occasional corked bottle. The half-case of very mousey wine was the exception, but that was so horrible it ended up being chucked. I have some regret purchases by the case where I might say that I don't like the wine very much - there's nothing wrong with it, but I can give it to other people who will not think worse of me for it.

So I rarely cook with wine either, but then I don't have much wine I want to dispose of badly enough to cook with it. An unwanted bottle is an excuse to pull out the Greek pork knuckle recipe, which is very popular with my wife.

In quantity, you could potentially make it into mulled wine for a party, assuming in this case it isn't too badly faulty? When I was a student, we used to have home-brew kits making "wine" from concentrate, to turn into mulled wine. With enough spices and fruit and sugar in it, you can get away with pretty poor wine. Mulled cider (that's European alcoholic cider) is often mulled, so why not white wine? Perhaps experiment and try it first. Any of your friends having a large cool or cold weather event you could offer to supply 9 litres of mulled wine for? I have a friend who puts on mini-concerts and theatrical events in his garden, for audiences of around 50, and that would go down a treat.

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/8/2024 6:31:34 AM

penguinoid

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Echinosum
In quantity, you could potentially make it into mulled wine for a party, assuming in this case it isn't too badly faulty? When I was a student, we used to have home-brew kits making "wine" from concentrate, to turn into mulled wine. With enough spices and fruit and sugar in it, you can get away with pretty poor wine. Mulled cider (that's European alcoholic cider) is often mulled, so why not white wine?

For what it's worth, I've seen mulled white wine for sale here in Südtirol a number of times, though I've yet to try it.

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/8/2024 7:08:41 AM

DoubleD1969

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Sangria!

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/8/2024 7:19:16 AM

ChrisinCowiche

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Not exactly street people, but indiscriminate in-laws are willing to drink anything, particularly if I proclaim how expensive it was when I open the bottle.

I too have a LOT of wine that might fit the category, probably ok, but not enough time to drink it all ourselves. Very high likelihood large numbers will be left to heirs to sort/drink/dump. There is a very poignant thread on berserkers recently, Tales from the Crypt about a man opening his recently passed father's cellar.

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/8/2024 8:49:30 AM

wineismylife

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What? No option for drinking them? Flawed poll.

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/8/2024 10:07:07 AM

KPB

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Nope, if you drink them, you don't regret them enough! I mean the ones you can't bring yourself to drink. Deeply regrettable purchases.

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/8/2024 12:33:54 PM

Ibetian

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quote:

ORIGINAL: KPB

Nope, if you drink them, you don't regret them enough! I mean the ones you can't bring yourself to drink. Deeply regrettable purchases.

I don’t have a single bottle in my cellar that I regret by this standard. Of course, some wines are better than others. If I sort my cellar by CT score, the worst wine in my cellar is a $20 Bourgogne rouge. We’ll use this for cooking, but also for drinking with snacks on the dock and other situations that call for uncritical quaffing. Maybe a decade or so ago I had wines I regretted, but those are long gone. Every wine I’ve bought for many years is either a “hamburger wine,” something for simple meals (not just burgers) or quaffing like that Bourgogne; a dinner wine, or a special occasion wine. There is some overlap, of course, but thinking about how I will drink it, rather than just reviews or scores, has helped me eliminate regrets.

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/8/2024 3:08:13 PM

KPB

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Ibetian, I am envious!

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/8/2024 7:24:51 PM

khmark7

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I give them to my friends or coworkers.

All in all i've been pretty good about not buying into the hype.....Bordeaux being my biggest swing and miss.

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/8/2024 11:56:06 PM

grafstrb

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Depends ...

If the wine is

Flawed [then I] : Dump It

Not Flawed But Nonetheless Terrible: Leave It for anyone who might want to drink it, and then Dump It and the end of the night.

Below Average, but Not Terrible: Use For Cooking, Leave It, sometimes Drink Myself, and put into Vinegar Jar.

Average: Use For Cooking, Leave It, Drink Myself, and put into Vinegar Jar.

Everything Better Than Average: {N/A --- question does not apply}

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/9/2024 9:19:50 AM

bretrooks

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If objectively terrible: dump. (This is rare - most often a flawed bottle but sometimes a wine where the structure or ripeness is unexpectedly out of whack.)

If not flawed but just not in a style I enjoy: #1 - save it to share with (or give to) people I think will enjoy it more than I do. I have a few of these which come to mind.

If just mediocre: I buy a decent amount of "table wine" like this on purpose. There's a place for simple, affordable bottles to grab for Tuesday evenings, last-minute dinners or church meetings, or cooking.

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/9/2024 9:26:29 AM

KPB

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I should resume going to the movie program that our synagogue runs. Once I brought six bottles -- nothing bad, but not what I was thinking of as amazingly good -- and they were really grateful. And this sums it up: the wines I think about aren't bad, but they aren't all that good. What triggered this were some 2020 reds from "No Girls". I guess 2020 was a tough vintage, and they have young vines. Nothing wrong with them at all. But I wish I had one bottle each of the four rather than the minimum purchase of three per wine!

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/9/2024 10:18:07 AM

wadcorp

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I don't see the option for “Use as a doorstop”.

That's our reference to wines we'd rather not have. Doorstop Wines.

.

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RE: Wine you regret - 4/9/2024 11:31:03 AM

fingers

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quote:

ORIGINAL: bretrooks

If objectively terrible: dump. (This is rare - most often a flawed bottle but sometimes a wine where the structure or ripeness is unexpectedly out of whack.)

If not flawed but just not in a style I enjoy: #1 - save it to share with (or give to) people I think will enjoy it more than I do. I have a few of these which come to mind.

If just mediocre: I buy a decent amount of "table wine" like this on purpose. There's a place for simple, affordable bottles to grab for Tuesday evenings, last-minute dinners or church meetings, or cooking.

I think I need to talk to my pastor about this subject