How To Store Homemade Wine in Mason Jars

Storing homemade wine in mason jars is a cute and easy way to keep your wine if you are not drinking it right away. The tight seal means you can keep your homemade wine in the perfect condition for storing and aging it to perfection. But you might wonder what the proper process is to store your wine in a mason jar.  

Here’s how you can store homemade wine in mason jars:

1. Gather your materials to store your wine in a mason jar.
2. Fill the mason jar with your homemade wine.
3. Cover the wine-filled mason jar.
4. Store the mason jar correctly.
5. Things to remember about wine in mason jars.

Storing wine in a mason jar is easy if you follow all the detailed steps below. Once you master these steps, you will store wine like a pro. There are also some things you should know and precautions you should take when you store your wine, detailed at the end of the article.

1. Gather Your Materials To Store Your Wine in a Mason Jar

Gathering your materials is the first step to storing homemade wine in a mason jar. Luckily, you need to get just a few things before you can start bottling. Here are the materials you need:

• Mason Jars.
• Homemade Wine.
• Lids and Seals.
• Wet Cloth.

This section has more details about all of these items. 

Mason Jars

You will need some mason jars if you store your wine in them. If you do not already have some jars, get some high-quality ones that seal tightly at the top. If you have more than one jar’s worth of wine to store, you should be able to find a multi-jar pack so they all match. 

Homemade Wine

You also obviously need your wine! Try to gather all the materials before your wine is ready to store. Then, when you finish fermenting it, you can put it in the mason jars following the steps below. 

If you do not already have a wine you are making; you might want to consider a wine kit. Wine kits make the process easy, and there are many great wine kits for beginners. A wine kit has everything you need to make wine then. The next step is to get the mason jars ready to store your homemade vino.

If you are unfamiliar with wine kits and are unsure if using one is right for you, you can learn more about them and their shelf life to help you decide if using one can help you start making homemade wine.

Lids and Seals

You also need lids and seals to put on your mason jars. Most jars should come with lids, but if you have some used jars lying around that you are using, you may need to get some lids. Make sure the lids fit the jars perfectly. Otherwise, your wine will not stay fresh. 

Wet Cloth

Finally, it would be best if you had a cloth on hand, preferably a wet one, to clean up any spilled wine before you store it. Wipe the jars before you store them so that there is no wine making them sticky as they sit. 

And, you do not want any wine on the rim of the jar before you seal it. Wine on the rim will make the lid stick to the jar and make it extremely hard to get off, especially if it sits for a long time.

These are the only four things you need to store your wine in mason jars. Just be sure to have enough jars, lids, and seals for the amount of wine you have to store. 

You do not want to be in the middle of putting your wine in the jars to find out you do not have enough. It is always better to have too many jars, as you can always use them for future batches of wine. 

2. Fill the Mason Jar With Your Homemade Wine

Your materials are ready, so it is time to fill your jars. Filling the mason jars should be easy; you need to be careful not to spill any wine as you transfer it into the jar. Immediately clean up anything you spill, so it does not stain or dry up and get sticky. 

Fill the wine up to the top of the jar so there is a minimum of air left. Air in your jar can make your wine go bad over time, especially if you plan to store it for more than a year. 

However, filling the jar all the way may be difficult unless you have the perfect amount of wine to put in it, or you discard whatever wine does not fit in the jar. 

If possible, fill up as many jars as possible, then drink or discard the excess; if you try to put less than a whole jar’s worth in storage, it will just go bad. 

3. Cover the Wine Filled Mason Jar

Now that your wine is in the mason jar, you must cover it up. Covering the mason jar is the most crucial step in storing your wine. If you do not tightly seal the jar, the wine will not last as long. Make sure you put the lid and the ring on your mason jar correctly, and close it as tight as possible. 

If you have mason jars but no lids for them, you must be diligent when you go out and find or buy lids to use. They need to be just the right size and seal onto the jar completely if you want them to work well for storing your wine. 

If you settle for lids that do not fit or something that is “close enough,” you risk your wine going bad during storage.

As excess air in the jar affects your wine, any leaks in the jar will let in air and affect your wine too. 

The longer you let your wine sit with exposure to air, the faster it will go bad. You do not want to have wine stored for a year or longer, be ready to drink it, and find out that it has gone bad. 

So, unless you store your wine for a short period, you must seal the mason jar tight. If you are buying mason jars for your homemade wine and not just using ones you already have, be sure to get ones that seal well. 

It is worth spending more money on good mason jars to keep your wine from going bad than going for cheaper ones and ending up with spoiled wine. 

4. Store the Mason Jar Correctly

Finally, it is time to store your mason jars with homemade wine. You need to keep them in a dark, temperature-controlled area if you want them to last. 

Make sure you label them with a date, batch number, or name, so you know what they are, especially if you frequently make new batches of wine, so you do not get them mixed up. 

Also, keep them away from kids who may get into the wine, especially if you do not clearly label it and they do not know what it is.

If you have kids and are worried about them getting into your wine, keep them locked up and make sure the kids know the mason jars are off-limits. 

Otherwise, they may see a liquid in a fun jar and get curious about it. The last thing you want is for your kids to drink your homemade wine. 

If you are storing your wine for a long time, you should consider whether or not the alcohol content will increase during aging. If so, you may want to store your wine elsewhere to keep the alcohol content from going up too much.

5. Things To Remember About Wine in Mason Jars

Storing homemade wine in a mason jar is easy and cute, but there are some precautions you need to take and some things to consider if you plan to do so. Remember these things to ensure your homemade wine stays safe and does not lose quality after storing it in a mason jar.

Oxidization

Remember that it is not a good idea to leave your wine in a mason jar for too long, either to ferment or just because you are not ready to drink it yet. 

Mason jars have a large surface area at the top where you will inevitably expose the wine to air. When wine comes into contact with air, especially over a long time, it oxidizes, and the quality of the wine will decrease. 

Even if you fill the mason jar as high as possible, there will still be some air at the top that can affect the wine quality. So, using a mason jar might not be the best long-term storage for homemade wine. 

This air exposure is why wine bottles have a small neck. The small neck reduces the wine to air contact and minimizes the air’s detrimental effects. Thus, it can stay stored for much longer without the risk of oxidizing. 

If you make homemade wine and do not intend to drink it immediately, consider storing it in a traditional wine bottle versus a mason jar. 

Another time you need to be careful about where you keep your wine and how long you store it there is in the freezer. Your wine might explode in the freezer if you keep it there for too long, and you may be unable to drink it afterward. 

Carbonized Wine in Mason Jars

Furthermore, it would be best if you did not bottle any liquids with carbon dioxide or other wine with pressure in a mason jar. Over time, the pressure will build up, especially if you seal it well as we suggested, and it could burst the jar or pop the top off. 

You never know when the jar might burst, which is very dangerous, especially if you plan to have the wine around other people or gift it to others who may not know about the risks. 

Depending on the quality of the mason jar and the amount of carbonation in the wine, it could burst in a matter of hours after you bottle it. Even if it seems fine, it could burst while you have it stored, and you could return to your wine storage to find a busted mason jar.

And, it might not just be one jar that breaks open. If you do not check on your wine constantly, you may return to it one day and find that multiple jars have burst open. 

If you make just one jar’s worth of wine and can withstand the possibility of losing it and having a mess, you can use a mason jar. But, for large batches using mason jars is not recommended.

So, mason jars are not the best or safest way to store carbonated wine. If you are still storing wine, you should not have any issues with pressure build-up, but be careful if you have carbonated wine, even if you are storing it for a short time. 

If you have carbonated wine, save your mason jars for your next still batch and put the carbonated wine in something made to withstand pressure, like an actual wine bottle. 

Store Homemade Wine in Mason Jars Reference Guide

Here is a table that summarizes all the information detailed above. You can use this quick reference guide to quickly and securely store your homemade wine in mason jars in the best way to make them last longer.

Final Thoughts

Storing homemade wine in a mason jar is easy and effective, as long as you seal the jar tight, fill the jar as high as possible, and do not use this method for any carbonated wine. Once you get the hang of this method, you will be filling mason jars with wine faster than you can make it.