I spotted this question on the Money Saving Expert forums earlier today:

I bought some ginger wine from sainsburys to try but it is far too sweet. I don’t want to waste it, but I can’t stand to drink it. Any ideas what else I can do with it?

Other forum posters suggested using a splash of it in brandy and hot water to make a winter cocktail, or with ice in lemonade for a summery one. Another suggestion is to use it to make a ginger-y trifle.

Any other ideas?

Long-time Recycle This friend Alice has emailed to ask about making a large wine rack:

I make loads of home brew wine and beer, and I could really do with a very big wine rack. Any ideas on how I could make one out of recycled stuff?

It’d need to hold at least 36 wine bottles, and/or a similar number of beer bottles. Doesn’t need to look especially pretty though ‘cos I store it all in the shed until it’s drinkable. All that liquid and glass is very heavy though, so it’d need to be very strong and stable.

I found this great page with lots of wine rack designs – and it might be possible to make some of those from recycled/reclaimed materials — for example, the pipe one near the bottom of the page.

Has anyone made any wine racks by reusing or recycling stuff? What did you use? Anyone got any suggestions of things that could be upcycled/reclaimed?

Back in the day, way back in the day, we featured reuses and recycling ideas for wine corks – and there are lots of great suggestions on there. But they nearly all are for real corks, not the synthetic alternatives so I thought it might be interesting to focus on those now instead.

Like with cork corks, plastic wine corks are sometimes just spongy tubes and other times they’re a little mushrooms, with a cap firmly attached to the end like the one in the picture. (You can also get designed-to-be-reusable plastic screw-in corks, but they’re less of an issue here since they’re purposefully bought for homebrewing and will typically be reused for as long as possible).

I imagine some wine cork crafts – such as noticeboards – can just as easily be made from straight plastic corks as cork-corks — but should some things be avoided? (Trivets for hot pots maybe? I’m unsure how heat resistant the plastic will be.)

And what about for reuses/recycling ideas for those with a cap attached/integrated?

An email from Leah:

We recently did a buy five bottles get a sixth free thing at our local supermarket but two out of the four reds we’ve opened so far have been awful, undrinkable because they’re so tart and vinegary.

We’re dubious about the other two bottles now but don’t want to waste them – or the two practically full bottles that we tried and hated. Are there any other uses for wine aside from getting sloshed or using it in food?

If they were white wine, I’d maybe suggest keeping them on hand to clean up red wine spills – since that’s supposed to work – but I’m not sure about red. Dying fabric maybe?

Anyone else got any suggestions?

(Photo by woodsy)

A suggestion from vweiss:

What can I do to reuse the little mini-wine bottles? I keep collecting them…hate to throw them even in the recycle bin as they seem practical to use for something?! They are so cute. There must be a creative use for them.

I don’t know whether vweiss means those half-wine bottles (which usually have a screw lid) – if so, that can probably be included with the previous narrow-necked bottles post – or the collectable miniatures, like the ones you get in overpriced mini-bars, but let’s presume the latter.

So any suggestions?

(Photo by wax115)