A first piece of advice I can give you: drink three glasses of wine every day. Then there is no problem. Cork on the bottle, red at room temperature, white in the fridge, drink the rest the next day. Article finished.
If something changes in the wine, it will be for the better. Unless you have bought real crap, but then it is no loss to pour it down the drain.
However, I have been told that not everyone drinks wine every day?
Now suppose, purely hypothetically, that you open a bottle of wine on Monday and drink one or two glasses of it. And only on Thursday do you consider drinking wine again.
I doubt it.
But should this happen, regardless of the color of the wine, the first step is the same: cork it and put it in the fridge. Because cold will slow down the aging process and even your red wine, after it has come back to room temperature, will taste like it would have tasted… on Wednesday. So don't expect any miracles.
Also not unimportant: the ratio of wine and oxygen in the bottle. If only a glass has been drunk from the bottle, the oxygen present will not have much influence on the vast majority of wine. However, if the bottle is more than half empty, the influence will be much more decisive and young wine will be completely destroyed in the short term, i.e. one day.
I've honestly never tried it, but theoretically you could put the wine in a smaller bottle or jar as a remedy. But can you see yourself pouring a glass of wine from a Tupperware box?
And of course all available tools have their influence, the question is whether that "influence" is worth the purchase.
Good news: quality wine will usually benefit from absorbing some oxygen. You will notice that the wine becomes softer, the flavors less pronounced and more intertwined. The wine has in fact aged a few years in a short time due to oxidation, the influence of oxygen on wine, and if it can withstand that, you immediately have a nice, balanced product to enjoy.
But that is only the case with solid wines with aging potential. A young wine of five to six euros is more likely to lose taste in the same process. And finish flat.
Milo's rule:
Sparkling wine should be drunk within two hours. No exceptions.
White and rosé wine, if kept in the refrigerator, can last for a few days if the bottle is more than half full. Otherwise, finish it.
Reds may, if necessary, be open for a day (read: with the cork on it).
Expensive red wine, which would benefit from leaving it open, will not survive the opportunity, through the decanter to achieve the same effect. Just because it tastes so good. And who knows what tomorrow might hold…
