Kitchn Love Letters

The Perfect Little Something for Every Wine Drinker on Your Holiday Shopping List

updated Oct 13, 2021
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Credit: Photo: Joe Lingeman; Prop Stylist: Stephanie Yeh

I am a wine-drinker all year round, but when the leaves crisp up and the radiators glow to life, that’s when I really break out the corkscrew. Fall and winter are wine season in my house — but they’re also busy times, when my partner and I try to hold ourselves to a single glass at dinnertime. Enter our new favorite wine tool, right up there with the wine opener itself: Repour, a perfectly magical way to keep a bottle of wine as good as new.

The Perfect Stocking Stuffer for Wine-Lovers

I first discovered Repour through a sommelier during some delightful blind wine tastings over Zoom. Gregory Stokes is the Sommelier and Manager at Veritas, a Columbus fine dining restaurant with a terrific wine program. During the shutdown he helped the restaurant pivot into a wine delivery service, and we’ve happily ordered many bottles. I noticed that for the wine tastings the wines were delivered with Repour stoppers, little gadgets that suck the oxygen out of the wine and keep the wine tasting as if you just opened the bottle. (Need a refresher on why oxygen and wine aren’t good for each other long-term? Read this.)

Unlike more elaborate wine preservation systems, these stoppers are very easy (and cute, too, with their brilliant blue color). You simply unseal them by peeling away a foil tab, then insert into the bottle like any ordinary wine stopper. Then they work their magic: sucking oxygen up and out of the bottle.

“Repours have quickly become my favorite method of preserving wine,” Greg told me. “They are easy to use and extremely economical compared to other quality preservation systems like Coravin.” (Coravin systems cost about $200.)

The only caveat to a Repour is that each one is single-use. You can cork and uncork the bottle multiple times, but it’s not recommended to reuse a Repour on multiple bottles. Repours come four to a pack, and we use them on wines that are especially nice, and that we want to savor over a couple of weekends — something more special than weeknight cheap reds.

And yes, they make the wine taste as good as new, even over a few weeks — and longer! “I’ve had wines under a Repour cap for an entire year before revisiting,” says Greg. “I was amazed that they remained as vibrant as when they were first opened.”

Repour’s own marketing language brags that you need to let the wine “open up” again after capping with Repours, and I’ve found this to be true. They’re an inexpensive way to make a bottle of wine last, so you can really draw out the enjoyment and savor it. As a wine-lover, I can’t think of a better stocking stuffer than that.