Mar 12 2008
Decanting for the Novice
Why would you want to use a decanter? Isn’t it just another gadget for the boys that need more toys?
It used to be the case that wine had a significant amount of sediment in the bottle. If you were going to pour a wine it was unpleasant looking to see a large amount of sediment floating in your glass and the sediment didn’t taste good. Decanting can be a great method for filtering out this sediment.
Modern wines typically undergo a large amount of filtration before being delivered to the consumer. Unless you have a wine that has been aged in the bottle for over a decade you aren’t likely to find enough sediment in the bottle to bother with. The wineries today go to great lengths to make sure you can drink their wines right out of the bottle. Some people argue that this advanced filtration also has an effect on the taste of the wine.
If most modern wines don’t require decanting then why discuss it here? The answer is aeration. Young wines (mostly reds) benefit from aeration. Aeration alters the wine, softening its bite and hurries the development the more complex aromas that normally develop as the wine ages. How does this work? The simple version is that once wine is exposed to oxygen it starts to rapidly change. Leave most any red wine out overnight and it will taste like vinegar by morning. At the very beginning of this process the sharp tannic flavors are some of the first things affected by the oxygen and it tames them down a bit.
Decanting provides a large surface area of wine/air contact. If you buy a “cheap” supermarket wine and that first taste is tannic or has a bite try decanting the bottle and see if you don’t notice an improvement. Decanting isn’t the best process for every wine but for a young bitey wine it is often the perfect solution. The more tannic the wine the more it needs to aerate. Light Pino Noirs probaly don’t need to breathe much. Bold Cabernets probably need a while to open up.
There is a lot of other online info on exactly how to decant. Most of this information is geared for the removal of sediment. Likely you are looking to aerate instead of filter. You can’t mess up decanting for aeration. Just gurgle the wine down the inside of the decanter. You don’t want to splash so much that it foams but you don’t need to be too careful. Let it sit and breathe for a minute or two and pour!
Mike and I have noticed that many of the wines we drink gain some benefit from a bit of aeration. In particular the Cinnabar Mercury Rising Bordeaux-style (cabernet) red seems to open up wonderfully by just pouring it into a decanter.
There are a bunch of really neat looking decanters out there. We particularly like the Wine Enthusiast Duck Decanter. It is pictured at the top of this article. Nothing like drinking wine out of an artfully crafted glass duck. Maybe it is all about boys and their toys.
[...] note of coffee was added to the dark chocolate. Perhaps if I get another bottle of this I’ll decant it and see if that coffee note shows up earlier. I can’t quite say this wine is [...]