No one likes to waste a great bottle of wine. But if you want to hang on to a bottle after opening it, you shouldn’t just shove the cork back into it.
There are plenty of tips for keeping an opened bottle of wine fresh for later, but one sommelier has gone viral on TikTok after explaining why you should never reuse the cork.
Warner Boin, who goes by @confidenceuncorcked on TikTok, is a 30-year-old sommelier with more than 80,000 followers.
“I know it sounds crazy,” Warner said in the now-viral video. “Don’t put the cork back in the bottle.”
Warner then explained that the holes in the cork will allow oxygen to get into bottle, and recommends using a proper bottle stopper — or even transferring the wine to a sealable container — instead.
“Natural corks have pores that wine is able to seep into. This is what causes a cork to swell up and provide a tighter seal against the glass neck of the bottle. Oxygen too is able to penetrate these pores. Thus there is an interface for oxygen and wine to interact,” according to Wine Makers Academy.
Pouring the remaining wine into a mason jar is one way to help keep it fresh, while Wine Cellars of Yorkshire recommend using a wine stopper with a vacuum seal. In a pinch, you can also cover the bottle with a zip bag and rubber band.