How long do alcohol-free wines last?

by John Risby

Published: March 17, 2020 Last updated: November 30, 2023

Question

Why must you drink de-alcoholised wine within 5 days? Is it bad for you after that?

The 5 days is simply a guideline, but a good one.

Once opened it is exposed to oxygen and nature simply runs its course.

It’s not necessarily bad for you after 5 days, but obviously it will progressively get worse just like most products do – ie, bananas or milk.

I would suspect it would taste too bad to drink long before it is capable of doing you any harm (the perfect setup for a joke there for someone…)

There are a few things you can do to help extend the life.

The best way to extend the life of alcohol-free wines is to store them in the fridge, even red wines.

This will slow down the process and make the wines last longer.

If you are storing a red wine in the fridge, you’ll want to remove it ahead of time to drink (although there’s no need to leave it too long – contrary to many people’s belief, red wine should be served cooler than modern centrally-heated room temperature anyway).

You can also use something like a Vacuvin Wine Saver to remove air from the bottle first.

Opened bottles of alcoholic wine don’t last long either – it varies on the type but it’s around the same length of time.

About This Q&A

Over the years I’ve replied to quite a lot of questions asked on Quora. I thought I’d post some of them here. I’ll post the reply I gave at the time and I won’t edit the original answer unless they are very embarrassing 😉 or to fix typos, but I may add an update or correction as a reply if needed. Please feel free to add/disagree etc in the comments section! This answer was originally posted on Quora on 17th March 2020.

How much did you learn from this article?

Hello there, wine connoisseur! Today, we'll dive into some 'grape' questions about alcohol-free wines, especially revolving around how long they last once opened. Let's see if you can pop the cork on the correct answers.

About The Author

John Risby

Co-Founder of The Alcohol-Free Shop and AlcoholFree.com. John is a recovering alcoholic who stopped drinking in June 2004. Born and raised in Manchester, he now lives in Malaga with his wife and young daughter. He came to terms with being an alcoholic many years ago, but still finds the concept his daughter is Spanish very strange.