The wine fairy

Our next-door neighbors have a wine business, and they often have partial bottles of wine leftover from their tastings.  They're very generous about sharing these bottles, many of which have had only one or two glasses poured from them.  Almost-full bottles of wine often just magically appear on our porch, causing us to exclaim, "The wine fairy was here!"

 

How's this for a problem?  We have too much wine.  I know, many some of you are thinking, "Is that even possible??"  Well, if the bottles were unopened, it would be no problem whatsoever.  But with open bottles, time is not on our side.  Wine keeps showing up, faster than we can dispatch it (we came home to five bottles one recent evening).  We drink some, we give some to friends, but still--it's accumulating.

So this week I'm making it an ongoing project to find uses for our surplus vino.  Today's undertaking: red wine marinara sauce.

 

It's been simmering on the stove for an hour or so, and WOW does the house smell fantastic right now.  I'm using this recipe, but substituting red for white wine because that's what we have (and what we prefer for marinara).  I doubled the recipe and plan on freezing it.  We should get many yummy meals out of this pot.

But...that whole pot of sauce only used one cup of wine.  I have plans for frozen sangria later in the week.  I also might freeze some wine by itself in ice cube trays, to be thawed for cooking use at some future time when (if!) we don't have any wine in the house.  Other projects under consideration: granita, beef bourignon, homemade vinegar.

Any other suggestions?

Update: A few hours after I posted this, there was a knock on the door.  Yup, you guessed it--three more bottles of wine.

Comments

[Stacy]

Thanks for the input, everyone.

Greta, I've got a couple of ice cube trays full of wine for future use now!

Jo, jelly hadn't occurred to me, but those tutorials make it look easy. Thanks for the links!

Laura, I agree. And we keep opened red wine in the fridge so it lasts considerably longer than it would otherwise. We just let it warm back up to room temp if we're going to drink it.

[Laura]

I find that wine lasts a lot longer opened (well, with the cork back in and in the fridge) than the experts actually recommend, especially if you're using it for cooking rather than drinking. But I am the opposite of a wine snob.

[Jo]

Oh, this looks like a better tutorial on the wine jelly thing, actually....from America's Test Kitchen. http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/do-it-yourself/2012/04/how-to-make-wine-jelly/

[Jo]

I was reading about wine jelly just this morning. I've never tried it myself, but it sounds like it might be worth exploring, and give you something that can be stored, or given as a slightly posh gift.

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-Wine-Jelly/ as a starter tutorial.

[greta]

Freezing wine for cooking works well.....