Once a bottle of wine is opened, the air starts to have an effect. Over time, flavors and aromas will lose their quality and depth.  If you’re in a position to finish a bottle on the same night it’s opened, there’s no problem. But fairly often, many of us have leftover wine that we want to save and drink later.

Capabunga is a new wine preservation system that promises to protect and preserve your unfinished bottles wine from oxidation.  So we put it to the test.

We opened two bottles of red wine – same winery, same vintage – and emptied each of half its content. For one bottle, we simply stuck the cork back in. For the other, we used Capabunga.  Then we waited three days, since that’s the commonly observed rule for keeping red wine around, and tried them again.

Capa

After a few days, the bottle with only the cork tasted a bit oxidized, had a muted nose, and was not that pleasant to drink. The Capabunga bottle was in noticeably better shape; it certainly didn’t taste like new, but the wine was much livelier and much more enjoyable to drink.

At about $25, the Capabunga kit is a solid buy.  We’d highly recommend it to anyone that regularly has unfinished bottles.  With all the wine you can save, Capabunga can easily pay for itself over time.