Can You Cook With Old Wine? Here's What You Should Know

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You may be familiar with three-time James Beard Award-winning chef Gregory Gourdet from his television appearances on "Top Chef" or "Iron Chef America," his best-selling cookbook "Everyone's Table: Global Recipes for Modern Health," or his acclaimed restaurant Kann in Portland, Oregon. Gourdet has forged a multifaceted career, built on his New York and Haitian roots and refined through his time at the Culinary Institute of America and working under Jean-Georges Vongerichten. He's currently the culinary director at the New York outpost of Printemps, a luxury department store with five different dining experiences.

With his extensive experience in food and beverage service, Gourdet is an expert in how to make materials go far in the kitchen. We recently sat down with Gourdet at the 2025 New York City Wine & Food Festival for an exclusive interview at the Tin Building by Jean-Georges, where he shared tips for how to use up that old wine that may be lurking in your kitchen. For him, the best way to use old wine is to deglaze a pan or to braise with it, though he does caution to throw out wine that's too far gone.

Gregory Gourdet recommends using your old wine to "deglaze your vegetables... after you brown your onions and garlic and tomato paste." A deglaze sounds technically harder than it is; it really means just adding a bit of liquid to a hot pan to loosen up any food particles and make a flavorful sauce. As Gourdet suggests, you can then take that deglazed wine sauce and cook it down to "[let] some of the better flavors come out. And then you have a little bit of acid, a little bit of depth."

Gourdet also suggests using old wine for a traditional braise, which means searing and simmering your food. It often requires browning vegetables or meat, then stewing the mixture in liquid to make it tender and keep it that way. This is one easy way to use that wine that you were going to throw out — after you use it to deglaze first. An old white wine might be good for chicken, for example, while a fading sherry can go into a pork braise and red wine past its prime can go to lamb or beef.

However, some wine is too old even to cook down into sauce. If the smell is sour, it's likely closer to vinegar than wine, which doesn't enhance your sauce. At that point, too much oxygen has crept into the wine, making the taste stale and unappealing. Gregory Gourdet warns against using wine that has been oxidized; when you've reached that point, there's no cooking down the spoiled flavor — it seeps through your food.

If you're not planning to finish a bottle of wine in one night, reseal it as tightly as possible with the cork or a stopper, keep it upright, and store it in the fridge for best results (you can also use a wine saver if you'd like). Most importantly, use your nose. If you can still smell some original notes of fruit or pepper, for example, take it to the pan. If it would taste better in a salad dressing — throw it out.