I've used wine in the past for cooking - just using the odd glass or half glass as needed. However I saw on the back of a bottle today that it should be finished in a couple of days. I only want it for cooking but don't use enough to finish it quickly.

I read a Delia Smith recipe once that called for half a glass of left over wine.
It took me months of asking people "What's "leftover wine"?"
I've never had any.

If you don't drink wine freeze what's left in whatever portions you use to cook and just keep it for that.

Give it a smell and taste. If it smells too much like vinegar then it's probably past it's best.

Yep but as a cheapskate I don't really want to buy a bottle and then have to throw it out virtually unused!

Asda do 250ml bottles of red and white cooking wine for £1. Today I bought a 200ml bottle of shiraz for a recipe calling specifically for that wine for £1.50 from Tesco rather than a larger £5-6 bottle. I'd do that in future. You can make unused wine into vinegar too rather than waste it, Jamie Oliver has some tips for that.

Then use it and ruin your meals

If it's undrinkable why put it in your food?

Just buy the little 187ml bottles, or make more than you need and freeze the rest.

Just buy a suction pump wine saver.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vacu-Vin-Vac.../dp/B000GA3KCE

...or use vermouth.

But still probably OK for cooking. I still make the Beef Casserole Nicoise from 'The Pauper's Cookbook' which uses red wine vinegar in place of wine for economy, and darn tasty it is too

But the freezing solution is the best bet. Freeze it in an ice-cube tray, and then bag them up in portions.

In this house about 2 hours.

I sometimes used to have trouble finishing off the third bottle.

could you not freeze it in a ziplock or something?

So why not the wine saver? They're not all that expensive and the wine will keep indefinitely.

I love those recipes that say use 200ml of wine, as I feel I have to open a fresh bottle, and then I have a good and reasonable excuse to drink the rest of the bottle as things such as wine savers and zip locks to freeze it in probably aren't available around here so no point wasting my time looking for them in the shops, I'm better of just making sure the wine is drunk within a couple of hours at the most as I don't want to risk the wine going off or evaporating or anything like that.

Excellent approach sir!

You can get foil bags of wine out of Asda that hold two bottles worth and keep for 6 weeks.

Alternatively, just give the leftover wine to a friend. I'll have it if its going spare

Good post.