Will wine age in a screw top or beer bottle?

[Impiryo]

I have kit Pinot Noir that is 'done', but not 'ready'. It's fully cleared, but still has a bit of a harsh, kit taste that should dissipate with age. It's currently in a carboy, and I want to bottle it to free up the carboy. I know if it's in a corked bottle, it'll age fine and improve with time.

My question - I don't have enough cork bottles. I was planning on doing some bottling in screw top bottles, and some in beer bottles. I know they're both fine options, but will the wine age/mature/improve in these, or will it stay how it currently is since there is no microoxidation through the cork?

 

[surlees]

I think your best option would be to go to a recycling center if there's one near you and pickup some free wine bottles. Lots of people recycle wine bottles.

 

[s0615353]

The only problem with the recycling center is that depending on how long they have been outdoors, sometimes you can find suprises in the bottles. No ammount of sanitation will make me feel comfortable drinking something out of a bottle with insects in it. I have a bar down the street from me where I get all of my bottles from. As long as you give the bartender a bottle of wine from time to time they should be more than happy to save bottles for you.

 

[Brian]

Impiryo, I would not bottle a wine that is not aged enough in twist top bottles. That is generally for wine that is finished and you don't need it to age anymore. There are different opinions on this but from my exp I would use cork bottles. Wait and get more bottles. Look on craigslist and you can usually find cheap ones, or you can post for used ones and then go pick them up and also hit up your friends and family for their empties. That is how most of us start,

 

[surlees]

Get them from the bartender!

 

[jswordy]

Get them from the bartender!

That depends on where you live. Generally speaking, in the booze-liberal Northern states, it is OK for barkeeps to give out bottles.

In the Southern states, it generally is illegal, and the place can be heavily fined or closed down by what many states call the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board (ABC) if the bottles are not destroyed once empty.

The reasoning that states that have bottle-smashing rules give for the law is that it prevents rotgut from being poured into high-class empties and fraudulently sold by the drink at the premium price.

This posed quite a problem for me for a long time, and I was having to buy used bottles. Now I have found a recycler, which gives them to me free as long as I can get there before THEY get around to smashing them to reduce volume for shipping.

 

[Noontime]

The twist top bottles will not give you a very good seal since the material has already been crushed. I've used these for very temporary storage in the refrigerator, but I certainly wouldn't use them for anything I wanted to drink more than a few weeks from now. The capped beer bottles are the opposite; as you said, they don't allow any transfer, so the wine will interact with whatever is in the neck but that's it. This works for short term storage (I would be OK with that up to a year, but that's just my opinion), but not many years. Obviously, as others have siad, getting bottles and corks is the best solution; especially since its a nice Pinot Noir...I've gotten creative with fruit wines and such, but the pinot should probably age properly.