How long doesHerringlast in the fridge?
Why the freezer is not an option here
The USDA marks the freezer as not recommended for this item, so the whole answer is a single field: 4 months to 6 months in the refrigerator from the day of purchase. It is not a warning: food held at 0 °F stays safe, so a not-recommended is a verdict on what would come out of the freezer.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
The refrigerator is the only place the USDA gives this item a storage time, as it does for 64 of the 466 foods the USDA lists. Within Seafood it is filed under Smoked.
- In the freezernot recommended
- Unopened · in the fridge4 months to 6 months
Turning the range into a date
Counting 6 months forward from a date is not arithmetic anyone does reliably in their head. Give the field the day it went into storage.
- Unopened · in the fridgeUse by4 months to 6 months after the day you bought it
Is this window about safety or about taste?
The answer at the top of this page reads 4 months to 6 months in the fridge. Herring, glass packed, in wine sauce does spoil, but a bacterial limit runs in days and this window runs past six weeks: the figure rates how good it will be. Past it, judge it by look and smell: this window rates how good the food will be, not the day it becomes a hazard.
Every figure assumes the food was sound when you stored it, that your refrigerator holds 40 °F or below and your freezer 0 °F or below, and that the package was handled normally.
It is past the date. Now what?
Say the calculator above puts Herring, glass packed, in wine sauce past its 4 months to 6 months in the fridge window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. Mold, a slimy or sticky surface, soft or darkened spots, or a sour smell mean it goes out whatever the date says.
The FoodKeeper entry this page is built from prints storage times and nothing else, so anything past them here is USDA and FSIS guidance rather than a figure from the source. The whole rule, including the cases the source does not cover, is set out under what to do when the date has passed.
Is that a long time?
Nothing the USDA files under Seafood keeps longer outside the freezer than this item: 6 months. Next is Caviar, fresh, in jar at 4 weeks, and the middle of the 17-item list sits at 3 days. Among the 340 foods the USDA also gives a refrigerator figure, it keeps longer than 84% of them.
Items that behave the same way
Every one of the 6 nearest items keeps the same or less, 4 days to 4 weeks against the 6 months of this item, which makes it the durable end of the cluster.
- Caviar, fresh, in jarkeeps 2 days in the fridge once openedup to 4 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Shucked clams, mussels, and oysterskeeps 3 days sealed in the fridge
- Fresh clams, mussels, oysterskeeps 5 days sealed in the fridge
- Cooked fish, allkeeps 3 days in the fridge
- Crab legs, king, dungeness, snowkeeps 2 days sealed in the fridge
- Cooked shellfish, allkeeps 3 days in the fridge
Products the USDA rates in the same places
14 other products are rated in exactly these places — refrigerator from the day of purchase — out of the 466 in the file, so this is an uncommon shape of record. The nearest of them by keeping time are String Cheese, Whipped cream and Cream cheese. They are listed below with their own answers, closest first, which is why this list differs from the one on their pages. Of the ones shown, none keeps longer than this one does. The longest-keeping of them is String Cheese at 5 months.
- String Cheese5 months sealed in the fridge
- Whipped cream3 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Cream cheese2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Dips2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Commercial brand vacuum-packed dinners2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Lettuce1 week sealed in the fridgeiceberg, romaine
- Radishes10 days sealed in the fridge
- Swiss chard1 week sealed in the fridge
The rest of the Smoked shelf
The USDA files this product on a shelf of two. Its only shelfmate under Smoked is Fish, which keeps 4 days against this one's 6 months, so every comparison on this page that reaches wider than the shelf has to climb to the whole of Seafood to find enough entries to say anything with. The order counts the longest window outside the freezer, so this item sits here at 6 months rather than at the 4 months sealed in the fridge its own answer prints.
- Fish4 days3 days in the fridge
If it has to keep longer than this
Nothing the USDA files under Seafood keeps at least twice as long as this one outside the freezer. It runs the other way: 16 entries in the category keep half as long or less, among them Caviar, Shucked clams and Fresh clams. So the question this page answers is not what to buy instead, but what this product outlasts on the same shelf, and by how much. Twice as long is the cutoff used here, so a product a few days apart from this one is not treated as a step.
- Caviar4 weeks2 days in the fridge once opened
- Shucked clams10 days3 days sealed in the fridge
- Fresh clams10 days5 days sealed in the fridge
- Cooked fish4 days3 days in the fridge
- Crab legs4 days2 days sealed in the fridge
- Cooked shellfish4 days3 days in the fridge
- Fish4 days3 days in the fridge
- Scallops3 days1 day sealed in the fridge
The record this page is built from
This page is built from a single FoodKeeper row, record 163 — the source’s own number for it, not a position — one of the 661 rows in the snapshot. That row fills 1 of the nine storage slots with a time, and the binding figure on it is printed by the source in months, which is the unit this page keeps rather than converting it to days. 1 slot is marked not recommended, which is an answer rather than a gap.
Where these numbers come from
Every range on this page is published by the USDA FoodKeeper and reproduced unchanged. The multipliers, the rankings, the percentages and the dates are ours, computed from those ranges. Where the source gives a span such as 3 to 5 weeks, comparisons use the upper figure, and the full span is always printed.
Rankings cover only the items the USDA gives a usable figure for, and identical ranges share a place rather than being ordered arbitrarily. Neighbors are chosen by nearest storage time within the same category, never alphabetically: two foods filed next to each other by name usually have nothing to do with each other. The freezer is excluded from ranking because it flattens almost everything.
Where the USDA lists several kinds under one name, they share one page here and every kind keeps its own windows: the source prints them as separate rows, and a page that merged them would be inventing a figure the source never published. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for the kind the plain name means — the shell egg for eggs, the can for tuna — which is settled name by name rather than by the order the source lists its rows in, and the page names it. Where the plain name means no single kind, the page prints no single figure at all and lists the kinds instead.
Source: USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026. This site computes every comparison on this page and takes responsibility for it. Found a figure that does not match the source? Tell us on the contact page, with the page and the row — the parsing is mechanical, so a mismatch is our bug and we want it. How the whole site is built, which figures are ours and where the source can be checked is on the method page.
USDA index terms: glass, glass packed, Herring, packed, sauce, wine, wine sauce
KeepsUntil is an independent reference built on public USDA data. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Food and Drug Administration. Whether a given window is a safety limit or a quality window is stated on the page that prints it.