[CigarSquid]

Originally Posted by stearns

I can jump in a little on the storage topic, I'm no expert but I've asked around a little. The general advice is no, you won't have any issues having a bunch of bottles open if you store them upright and out of direct sunlight. There is the possibility of oxidation, although that will likely take a few years and is based on the amount of air space in the bottle, so a bottle that is opened with one drink out of it will take a significantly longer time to notice the effects than one with only a splash left in it. Some people do "wet the corks" by tipping the bottle over although once a month is far too often, unlike with wine the high alcohol content in spirits will eat away at the cork and cause it to not seal well over time. Something like once every 6 months or year is fine if you're worried about long term storage. The "Move to decanter" trick is more about moving to smaller bottles, so if you have an expensive bottle of whiskey and you drink half but plan on saving the other half for long term you can move it to a 375ml bottle and fill it to the brim so there's less oxygen physically in the bottle interacting with the liquid. I have a friend who did something similar with his Michters 20, which is worth something like $5-6k these days. Once he got 1/3 through the bottle he just moved it all to 2oz jars so there would be no effect of oxygen on what is left. I went over his house and he handed me a 2oz jar to drink and an empty bottle to look at

The practical advice is don't worry about how long something has been open, but once you start getting below the halfway mark or lower maybe plan to finish that bottle off soon. I'm working through a significant purge right now trying to kill off most of my less than half full bottles before opening too many others. I have a friend who only keeps 30 bottles open at a time, I aspire to be as disciplined as that but I'm probably triple that right now, but working in the right direction!

That's some good info, thanks.