I've had a bottle of Muscat de Rivesaltes on the shelf for a while but opened it last night for cooking. How should I store the remainder, as I'll be using it rather slowly?
It's a very lightly fortified wine, only 15.5%. I'd keep sherry (18%) tightly stoppered and on the shelf for weeks, but would freeze a strong red if it wasn't going to be used in a few days.
Drinking it up isn't an option as I'm not much of a drinker, especially alone. So should I treat it like a stronger fortified wine, or like normal wine?
Best Answer
Treat it like a sweet wine, because that's what it is.
While 15.5% alcohol isn't very much, sugar is a great preservative, too. According to your Wikipedia link, MdR has a required minimum residual sugar of 100 g/l. A bottle of decent Sauternes (for exampel Suduiraut, which at my vendor has vintages ranging 116-135 g/l) can keep for weeks (under cork, in the fridge).
A third factor that comes into play is also the amount of sulphur (SO2) added to the wine, which usually is quite high in sweet wine, although vins doux naturels might be a different story, since SO2 is not as important to stop fermentation when you're also fortifying. (Finding out how much SO2 there's in the wine is usually not very easy, unless the producer is opposed to its use and wants to tell you how little there is in their wine.)