This is why professional wine critics swirl their wine glasses—they want the wine to release its aromatics around the lip of the glass. As wine ages, solid particles of sediment naturally separate from the liquid and fall to the bottom of the bottle. However, when you take that bottle off the rack and uncork it, you disturb the sediment , and it mixes with the rest of the wine.
Because this sediment has a bitter taste, many people like to pour the entire bottle into a decanter at least an hour before serving, which gives the sediment time to sink back down to the bottom. After you decant the bottle, check on the wine every 30 minutes and serve it when all or most of the sediment has reached the bottom. You can actually use sediment to decide how long to decant your wine. Hold the bottle up to the light and look for solid material floating in the liquid; the more sediment you see, the longer you typically need to decant.
This process usually takes about an hour, sometimes more. You should never try to remove sediment from a wine if it means compromising its delicate flavors. If you want to avoid sediment, you can always let the wine sit in the bottle after opening it and pour the wine more carefully into your glass directly from the bottle.
One way to decide whether you should decant a wine is to smell or taste it first. Consider decanting the wine if:. Some styles and varieties of wine are known for decanting well and, in fact, may require some decanting to bring out the full complexity of their flavors and aromas.
Proper storage allows this process to occur more naturally and over a longer period of time. So can you enjoy a wine before its peak? The simple answer is yes, but it does take adhering to a few principles. While wine ages in a cellar, minute amounts of oxygen are continually introduced to the wine; this is what helps the wine to reach its peak. However, when one opens a young wine, obviously this process is halted and the wine is immediately exposed to a large amount of oxygen.
From this point on, the wine will then evolve rapidly over a period of hours. This aeration will improve the wine and make it much more enjoyable to drink. One way to maximize this aeration process is by decanting the wine. This involves pouring the bottle of wine into a glass reservoir, which immediately exposes the wine to massive amounts of oxygen.
So how long does the wine need to decant? There is common misconception that old wines need more decanting, but the opposite is actually true. In general, the younger the wine, the longer the decant required.
For the youngest, most complex wines, even decanting well over 8 hours is necessary. There is no hard and fast rule, however. But a simple rule of thumb is that the better the vintage and the better the wine, the more time should be allowed for decanting. Wines that are designed to be enjoyed earlier may only require a 30 minute decant, if any. This decanting process can actually make a wine more enjoyable. One can learn a lot about a wine by sampling it every hour or so to see how it is evolving.
It is very common for the aromas and flavors to change considerably. The wine will just seem softer and often less harsh. This is used for typically older wines, however. As wines age, tannins and other particles polymerize, often creating solid sediment. Since this sediment can taste bitter, it is preferable to exclude it from the wine.
The easy wasy to do this is to allow it to settle to the bottom of the bottle, then pour off the wine while leaving the sediment in the bottle. While this process may seem simple, it must be done very carefully. First, the bottle should be stood upright for several hours prior to opening.
This will allow the sediment to settle to the bottom. If you want to be even more careful, let the bottle stand upright for a day or two. For me, that is an essential quality of a good wine. Now, fine Bordeaux improves with age. Ideally, I would prefer to drink these wines in 10 years. Why decant? Science has much yet to learn about what happens to wine as it ages, but we know that exposure to minute amounts of air over years plays a role.
Decanting a young wine exposes it to a lot of air in a short time. This in no way mimics aging. That is, a young wine will not develop any of the complex nuances that reward years in the cellar. But decanting will help a young, inhibited, age-worthy wine relax its tight grip on aromas and flavors, especially in an exuberant vintage like , in which the wines are fairly supple.
As many discovered, decanting made a big difference. Wines that seemed like clenched fists when uncorked loosened up a bit with an hour or two in the decanter, or even in the glass. One wine, the Bernadotte, was clearly different from the other two. While it had similar aromas and flavors of red fruit and earth, it was lighter, softer and less complex. Its texture was not as fine, while the flavors were less intense and more ephemeral.
They disappeared quickly after swallowing. This was a very pleasant wine, but not much more than that. It was also quite a bit cheaper than the other two. And while the Cantemerle and the Sociando-Mallet were fascinating, they were also quite different.
As many of you who drank the Cantemerle pointed out, its initial impression was savory and herbal rather than sweetly fruity. It had an almost cedar-like quality that I love. The Sociando-Mallet was lusher, with an impression of fruit and flowers leavened with earthy flavors. Both wines had great minerality, an imprecise term that tries to indicate the aromas and tactile sensation of stoniness translated into flavor.
They differed in texture as well. The Sociando-Mallet had exceptionally fine, silky tannins, while the Cantemerle was a little chunkier. You could sense the grip of the tannins on your tongue and cheeks. It was not so polished.
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