How long should i decant red wine

Plus, it can be fun to experience the full evolution of wine as it opens up in your glass; you might miss an interesting phase if you decant too soon.

A particularly fragile or old wine especially one 15 or more years old should only be decanted 30 minutes or so before drinking. A younger, more vigorous, full-bodied red wine—and yes, even whites—can be decanted an hour or more before serving.

At some tastings, wines are decanted for hours beforehand and may show beautifully, but these experiments can be risky the wine could end up oxidized and are best done by people very familiar with how those wines age and evolve.

Ask Dr. Vinny: What actually happens to a wine when you decant it? Vinny: How do I decant a really large bottle of wine? Vinny: Can you tell me how long I should decant a specific wine before drinking? By Wine Spectator staff. But in most still reds the presence of CO 2 can make the wine more tannic and is usually considered a fault. This is especially common with Syrah.

Thirty minutes to an hour in a decanter can help release those compounds, allowing you to reassess the wine for its other qualities. Further agitation, like swirling, or pouring the wine back and forth, can help if you are in a rush, though this is only recommended for sturdy wines.

Exposure to oxygen leads to reactions in the wine, both good and bad, many of which will take several hours or days to fully develop. Among the first things that react with oxygen are sulfur-based compounds. For example, sulfuric compounds give Sauvignon Blanc its citrusy, tropical aromas, and are easily lost to oxidative reactions. Contrary to popular belief, decanting older wines is far from an ironclad rule. Burgundy , for example, is known for its delicacy and the question of whether or not to decant is often hotly debated between experts.

However, older vintages of Nebbiolo -based wines, like Barolo and Barbaresco , along with Rioja and other full-bodied wines, are generally strong candidates for decanting. If the initial taste of a wine is promising, decanting may not be necessary. Carefully pour the wine directly from the bottle into the glass. It starts to smell better; the tannins are softer, and the fruit flavours become more pronounced. This is the purpose of decanting, which is essentially the process of pouring the contents from one vessel typically a bottle into another vessel typically a decanter.

By doing this, you are allowing oxygen to come in contact with the wine to open it up and show at its best. The other purpose of decanting is to separate the wine from any sediment that develops in the bottle over time.

Many young wines can be tight or closed on the nose or palate. When the wine is decanted, it takes in oxygen, which helps open up the aromas and flavours. Prior to opening the bottle, the wine is practically in a comatose state due to very low oxygen levels. As well as releasing aromas and flavours, adding oxygen increases the rate at which the chemical reactions that degrade the wine occur. Keep a lit lighter or match beneath the neck of the bottle and start pouring very slowly when the bottle becomes parallel to the ground.

But the process of pouring the wine into the decanter allows you to see the sediment and avoid it. You may have seen sommeliers or a wine negociant doing this; it's one of the most noticeable sommelier responsibilities. Here is how to decant wine without a decanter. Because wine glasses are designed to aerate wine, you can usually do a quick-and-dirty decant by pouring a standard wine pour in a glass, swishing it around a few times, and letting it breathe.

For how long you let it breathe depends on the type of wine. What does a wine aerator do? Well, a wine aerator is a wonderful little wine gadget that forces wine to interact with a pressurized stream of oxygen. It immediately aerates wine and, because of the force of the oxygen stream, also approximates a nice swishing. Aerators not only kickstart the oxidation process, but they also boost the evaporation process.

Yes, this may seem insane and you won't see it in any books about wine. But it works well enough for relatively inexpensive bright, young red wines.