Decanting Wine
Are you confused about the notion of decanting wine? Are you wondering if you should do it, when
you should do it, or how you should do it?
We're here to help.
Some may think decanting to be a bit pretentious or
elitist. The process can appear that way,
especially if done in a restaurant setting, with a flurry of activity, using
exotic vessels. But decanting is really
just pouring fermented grape juice from a bottle to another container. There is
nothing mysterious here, folk.
There are two practical reasons to decant:
• If the wine is young, decanting allows it to breathe and
open up, so that it may be closer to its peak when you serve it.
• If the wine is more mature, decanting allows you to catch
any sediment that's accumulated in the bottle over the years before it shows up
in your glass.
So how does one decant?
With a young bottle, just pour the contents into your decanter, or
whatever other clear vessel you're using.
Younger wines should have little to no sediment. You're just giving the wine some air. There's no magic timeframe on how long to
decant, either. Whatever time you have
available is your likely answer. A few
hours should be plenty for most bottles.
When you're done having the wine sit, you can pour it back in its bottle
for easy serving. (That's called double decanting) Wow.
Decanting an older wine is a bit more involved. Since the purpose is to eliminate sediment,
we're going to slowly pour the wine into your decanter. You'll need some light to allow you to see the
sediment as it reaches the neck of the bottle.
You want to stop or be very careful at that point to keep the wine in
the decanter pure. You'll likely have a
small amount of wine left in the bottle with a mouthful of sediment. Pour the remaining liquid into a glass. You may be able to filter out most of the
remaining sediment by swirling the glass.
Or not. If you know someone who
loves sediment, give the glass to them.
Some folks use a Vinturi
filtering device to pour the wine through on its way to the decanter. That will give the juice some additional
aeration, and certainly can't hurt. You
can occasionally swirl the decanter itself to give the wine a bit more air.
We've read recently about folk using blenders to aerate
wine. I haven't done that. I’m not going to do that. Why not?
First, there's the problem of finding our blender. Then there's the thought of what else has
been blended with it, and how well it may have been cleaned afterward.
Let's discuss decanters themselves for a moment. Some of these objects are pompous,
ridiculous, and ludicrous and probably a lot of other words ending in
"ous". All you really need is
a clear vessel. A glass pitcher will
do. Some people are fond of using
scientific beakers. They're very
functional, and a lot more effective and cost efficient than an exotic
decanter.
We hope to have taken some of the mystery out of decanting
for you. Try decanting a young wine for
an hour or so before serving it sometime soon, and see if it adds to your
enjoyment. And if you plan to pop the
cork from an older Cabernet, decant it on the front end to avoid a Heimlich
maneuver later. Cin cin, either way!
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