Even if you love wine, chances are good that you don't want to lug a heavy, breakable bottle on a picnic or a hike. Single-serve vino just might be your alfresco summer savior.Some to look out for:Most elegant: W1ne for One California: Chardonnay and Merlot, $49.50/12 pack These are like those teensy bottles from the hotel minibar, except they come complete with a flute built into the screw top, so you don't have to resort to swigging from the bottle. The wines are from Sonoma's Steelhead Vineyards.Cutest: Stack Wines California: Pinot Grigrio, Chardonnay, Red Blend, Cabernet, $12.99/stack The stack of four filled glasses is the equivalent of a bottle. Each stack comes with a snap-on lid, if for some reason you don't manage to drink a whole glass (we can't imagine that scenario though).Most portable: Nuvino & Spot Wine Chile: Sauvignon Blanc, South Africa: Chardonnay, Australia: Red Blend Argentina: Malbec, $3.99; in stores this summer California: red blend and white blend, $3.99;

These bear an unfortunate resemblance to something you might give your kids for their lunch boxes, but are obviously for adults only. Super lightweight, the pouches would be great for throwing into your backpack for some well-deserved refreshment at that hidden waterfall. The Spot Wine comes with its own straw. Oregon Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, $6 Yes, it looks like light beer, but the Underwood Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris from Union Wine Co. are the same wines that this Oregon company puts into their regular bottles. Each can is the equivalent of about two glasses. California: Chardonany, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Grigio, Merlot, $2.99 Zipz wines are found in major league baseball stadiums and other arenas throughout the country. Each sturdy plastic goblet has a screwtop lid, so you can reclose it for energetic cheering in between sips.Photos: Catherine Lo, Steelhead VineyardsCatherine Lo is an associate food editor in the Good Housekeeping Test Kitchen.NEXT: The Best Wines to Pair With Your Burger »

Do good things come in small packages? We test the growing market in 25cl and 187ml wine miniatures Do good things come in small packages? One product occupying more shelf space in supermarkets recently is the wine miniature, or mini. You see a lot of them in stores at railway stations, especially, but rarely on the actual trains: I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen many people in coach D, swigging chianti or claret with their Big Mac.best bottle red wine under 20 As you’d expect, smaller bottles appeal mainly to singles, especially health-conscious under-35s and older consumers who want to treat themselves, much as they might with a box of chocolates. best kind of wine with pizzaThe ranges are pretty limited, though – retailers clearly take a “greatest hits” approach to wines in this size – nor are they particularly cheap, pro rata: a 25cl bottle of Marks & Spencer Petit Chablis, say, will set you back £5, while the standard 75cl bottle is only £10. beer and wine cafe

But, continuing last week’s theme, they are a good way to limit your alcohol intake, in a similar way to a calorie-counted ready-meal. The two main players on the mini front are Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury’s, whose sales have risen 25% in the past year. Sainsbury’s generally does the better job, with more variety and a bottle size (187ml) that keeps us women under our recommended maximum units per day. M&S favours 250ml bottles, which seem to work on the assumption you’ll dutifully drink half the bottle and save the rest for the next day. dry red wines in orderI doubt that’s going to happen in most instances.the best red port wine I tasted a selection the other week, and it was nowhere near as dispiriting a task as I’d feared. best wine and food combinations

From Sainsbury’s, I’d happily – well, fairly happily – buy the smooth, mellow Taste the Difference Vinedos Barrihuelo Rioja 2009 (£2.25, 13.5% abv, 2.5 units per bottle) and the dark, brambly Taste the Difference Primitivo Salento 2013 (£2.25, 13% abv, 2.4 units), while Marks’s smooth, creamy White Burgundy (£3.50, 12.5% abv, 3.1 units) would hit the spot with ready-made fish pie. Both prosecco and champagne look particularly dinky in mini bottles, but they do not work out cheap, in the case of champagne in particular. wine for sale on amazonI’d balk at paying M&S £8 for a 20cl bottle of Desroches when the full-size bottle is £19 at the moment (down from £28).best selling wine in india Brands on the whole don’t do much in the way of minis, but Concha y Toro’s ripe, blackcurranty Casillero del Diablo Cabernet Sauvignon 2013 (13.5% abv) and passionfruit-streaked Sauvignon Blanc 2014 (13% abv) actually make rather good drinking – both come in 185ml bottles and cost around £2.25 in selected branches of Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s. best wine brands for health in india

If nothing else, that’s proof one shouldn’t pre-judge big brands.Let’s face it: most small bottle or single serving wines in the US are intended for airplanes, sporting events or minibars and are not the best wines you could be drinking. Those adorable .187 liter small wine bottles (called a Piccolo) are great and are reusable… Just rinse them out, let them dry, and then refill them with your own high quality wine! Let me break down the reasons why you should go buy a couple of 4 packs for yourself and give this a try. Why re-bottle into small wine bottles? If you are not going to finish the bottle you are opening, transferring the extra to small wine bottles can make a lot of sense. Due to minimized surface area, the wine will store better and last longer because it will reduce wine oxidation. By pouring the wine out of the original bottle, you have functionally decanted away any sediment. And you can have a controlled inventory of single servings, meaning you can have a larger variety of wines open at any one time.

Wine Shelf Life 1-2 Weeks+ The goal is to reduce the amount of time the wine touches air and also to slow the oxidation process. As soon as you open up a large bottle of wine, immediately transfer whatever you don’t plan on using to the small wine bottles and fill them right to the top (you want as little air in the bottle as possible). Then make sure to store them in the refrigerator. Under these conditions your wine should last 1-2 weeks (..and possibly longer, depending on the wine!). Be sure to review how to store open wine for a few additional tips. Lightweight, single servings let you switch up the offerings. 4 small wine bottles will weigh less than one glass 750ml bottle and are much easier to carry in a picnic basket. Single people drink wine too, and a regular 750ml bottle is a lot to drink by your sad lonesome self. When you open that new bottle, pour yourself a glass and transfer the remainder into 3 clean and sanitary .187 L screw top bottles. You can even have a white and a red with dinner without the guilt of all those open bottles.

Anatomy of the .187 L bottle Because these wines are primarily manufactured for airplanes and sporting events, they are increasingly made out of PET instead of glass. PET(polyethylene terphthalate) is one of the highest quality plastics available and contains no BPA. This makes them significantly lighter than their glass counterparts. The aluminum screw tops have small seals in them that you need to be delicate with during cleaning. The life of this seal is the effective life of the bottle, and you should get many uses out of a bottle before you need to discard it. What You Will Need: 187 ml Bottles (4 for every 750 ml bottle) These need to be clean, sanitary and dry. You are not bottling for longterm cellaring, but you still want a sanitary environment for your wine. Stores like Target and Walmart carry small wine bottle 4 packs. A tiny food grade funnel Homebrew supply stores usually have really good ones, but you want a tiny small end and a large enough top to not make it too cumbersome to pour into.