" What do I do with leftover wine?"
Tuesday, 1 January, 2013
Shante Hutton, wine.co.za
Dear Chard O’Nay
I’m rather obsessive when it comes to saving things and I hate to waste. Do you have any ideas to help me use up leftover wine?
Kind regards,
Ivan O’Cedee
Dear Mr O’Cedee,
My first thought is ‘why would anyone have leftover wine?’ The idea is almost unfathomable.
Was it a particularly bad wine? Was there a natural disaster that stole you away from said wine? Did a distant relic of a relation bestow it upon you out of their private collection which has been kept under their bed for 40 years? Sorry, I digress.
For those of you who demonstrate severe self-control, I have four suggestions for the use of wine other than drinking it straight.
1) Freeze it in an ice tray and use it in gravies or stews. It’ll keep for a good few months and when a recipe calls for a dash of wine, you’ll have cubes on hand to drop into your dish.
2) Create a sweet boozy syrup. Pour into a pan the leftover wine combined with some sugar and heat it over the stove until it boils. Reduce the heat and let it simmer for 30 minutes. Let it cool and then keep it in the fridge in an old jam jar with a secure lid. Use on ice cream of meringues.
3) Use it for mulled wine. Whether it’s a good or a bad wine, the use of oranges, cloves and cinnamon help mask it and you get yourself a lovely winter warmer.
4) Make Vinegar. Leaving wine to be exposed to the elements will give you vinegar but it does take a long time and it might not necessarily be very nice. However, you could add some red wine vinegar to the wine to quicken the process. Don’t blame me if the concoction is nasty though.
Of course, you could just collect all your left over wine, mix it together and re-bottle it. It might even win you a gold
Ciao, Chard