Decanting wine – one of the most popular wine terms, often used by bartenders and sommeliers to refer to the process of pouring wine from a bottle into a decanter in order to separate it from the sediment, to aerate young wine and to check the condition of mature wine after long-term storage.
Proper decantation of wine
Before decanting, the wine must spend at least 24 hours in an upright position (if the wine has a lot of sediment, it is better to increase this period). Then, after making sure that the decanter is clean and free of odors, a small but strong light source should be prepared. Traditionally, it becomes a candle, but if desired, it can be replaced with a flashlight, table lamp, etc.
According to the rules, the decantation of wine requires you to open the bottle as carefully as possible. The corkscrew spiral must be screwed into the center of the cork. Ideally, 1-2 turns of the spiral should remain above the cork: if there are fewer of them, the cork will pierce through and its crumbs will fall into the bottle, if more, it may simply break.
Then, placing a light source under the neck of the bottle, you need to start slowly pouring its contents into the decanter. It is important that the wine flows down the walls of the decanter, and does not pour directly to the bottom. When the sediment approaches the neck of the bottle (and it will be clearly visible against the background of bright light), the process stops temporarily. Ultimately, all the sediment will remain at the bottom.
However, if there is desperately not enough time for such artistic operations, or the cork will crumble during opening, the wine can be filtered into a decanter through a clean cloth (muslin, for example) or a paper coffee filter.
Video how to decant wine
Which wine can’t be decanted?
It is also worth noting that not all wines are suitable for decanting. It is believed that aged red wines and some varieties of white wines, which reveal their qualities when saturated with oxygen, are decanted.
Sparkling and rosé wines are usually not subjected to decantation, but sometimes a similar technique is still practiced in a decanter, although I have not found any reports or any serious confirmation of this issue.
Is decanting necessary? This is an exclusively personal choice of everyone: someone considers this an indisputable rule, someone does not.
Relevance: 25.12.2015
Tags: Encyclopedia