Leftover wine is not something you should pour down the drain. After all, it’s wine! But don’t worry, there are many uses of leftover wine that are too good not to try.
A new wine and food pairing may not be possible but you can use the leftover wine in a recipe. Keep this in mind when you are choosing a winter wine which are especially good for comfort food recipes.
10 Great Ways to Use Leftover Wine at Home
You’ve cooked a great meal, chosen a great wine to go with it, but didn’t manage to finish the bottle. What do you do? Don’t throw away that leftover wine!
Next time you have leftover wine, keep the wine bottle on your kitchen wall wine rack. You can put it to use later on with these 10 ways to use leftover wine.
1. Make a Drunken Fruit Jam
Use leftover red wine for a fancy homemade jam recipe. Wine and cheese have always been a great pairing so serve this jam as a condiment on a cheese platter.
2. Add to Stews and Sauces
Many recipes call for a cup or so of wine. Save your leftover wine in the fridge so you can use it for your next recipe. Red wine works great for dishes with beef or game meat like deer. White wine adds depth to white sauces for chicken or fish.
3. Save for Deglazing
Deglazing is using the residue left in the pan after cooking meat to make gravy, sauces or broth. Deglazing works best with leftover wine which soaks up all the flavors.
4. Make Desserts with Wine
Who said you can only have dessert wine with dessert? Incorporate your leftover wine into any of these delicious dessert recipes.
5. Make Wine Ice Cubes
Do you have a favorite summer wine but do you add ice to keep it cold? Prevent your wine from watering down by adding wine ice blocks, instead.
Simply fill up your ice tray with leftover wine and leave it in the freezer. It will be ready to go for the next time you open up a bottle of your favorite wine. You can also use the wine ice cubes in fun summer cocktails like sangria or Aperol spritz.
6. Make Your Own Vinegar
Love trying to make your own version of common kitchen staples? Use your leftover wine to make homemade white wine vinegar or red wine vinegar. It is easier than you think. Most recipes for wine vinegar only call for red or white wine and a mother vinegar.
7. Add to Compost
The nitrogen in wine, red wine especially, can help activate your compost pile. This works with wine that is still drinkable but wine that has gone off is fine for composting, too.
Adding wine to a compost pile does affect its moisture level so keep monitoring the compost. It is better to gradually add the leftover wine than to pour in too much.
8. Use as a Natural Cleaning Agent
You can make your own DIY cleaner using leftover white wine. Usually, this requires you to wait for the wine to go off so that it can act like white wine vinegar. Look up the instructions for a DIY cleaner to find out which leftover wine would work best.
9. Eco-Friendly Produce Cleanser
Mix together wine and water in a spray bottle to clean your fresh fruit and vegetables with. This is a more environmentally friendly and safe alternative to store-bought produce sprays. Just remember to wash the fruit and vegetables after so that you do not attract any insects to your produce.
10. Make a DIY Fly Trap
Having a problem with fruit flies during the hotter months? You can use leftover wine to make your own DIY fruit fly trap in a matter of seconds. Take your bottle with leftover wine and add a drop of dish soap. This makes the liquid less dense and makes it easier for the fruit flies to drown.
Take a piece of newspaper and roll it into a funnel. Remove the cap or cork from the red wine bottle and replace it with the paper funnel. And you are done! Just let the bottle stand for a few a days and replace it when necessary.
As you can see, there are more uses to leftover wine than just using it in a sauce. Now you have no more reason to get rid of the leftover wine that you forgot was in the fridge.
The great thing about these leftover wine uses is that it does not matter what kind of wine you are drinking. In some cases, it only matters whether it is red wine or white wine. Go ahead and experiment with your leftover wine.
