Decanting is the process of pouring a liquid, in our case wine, from one container to another. It serves two main purposes:
- separating sediment (more so for older wines or lo-fi unfiltered wines)
- allowing wine and air to mix
The first reason is self explanatory, but the second, why do we want air to mix with our wine?
According to ‘Wine Selectors‘
‘The major benefit of decanting is to let wine and oxygen combine. Wine feeds on the increased oxygen when it’s aerated, giving it the best chance to open up. This allows the fruit and florals to prosper, the structure and tannins to soften, and the wine to be in optimum tasting condition. Decanting also aids in removing sediment, particularly from aged wine.
In the past, a wine that had a cork and was deemed worthy, or was of good providence, was meant to be decanted, but the advent of the screwcap has changed all this. It’s the newer bottles in your cellar, the ones you put aside for immediate drinking, which are the ones that can benefit from a little TLC in a wine decanter.
As screwcapped wines arrive tighter and more fine-boned that their predecessors under cork, a bit of air can help release primary fruit and aid texture.’
So next time you go to grab that bottle of wine, think about decanting, or if you don’t have a decanter using an aerator or at least giving it time to breath.
