Wine decanting: Give wines some air

[Don Giovanni]

Wine decanting: Give wines some air

The results of this tasting is staggering in wine perception...if you read on you will get a nice definition of a closed wine...

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Air is one of the most talked about but most misunderstood elements in wine.

We say a wine needs to "breathe" as if it just needs a few minutes to freshen itself up, releasing its seductive perfume. In fact, most wines have been waiting years just to cast off a little gas.

In the end, the result is the same: To be appreciated, a wine needs to smell its best. To do that, it needs more air, faster, than you might think -- but not for the reasons you might have heard.

People talk about a wine being "closed," says Piero Selvaggio, owner of Valentino Restaurant Group. "A closed flower doesn't give you the pleasure a beautiful rose will give you when it's in full bloom. You want the petals of the wine, its aromas, to open up and talk to you."

But poetry aside, to wine researchers, "closed" means nothing. It's just another metaphor, like saying a wine is "cheeky."

"The word 'closed' does not have a physical meaning for sensory testing," says Andrew Waterhouse, chairman of the Department of Viticulture and Enology at UC Davis.

Edited October 7, 2009 by Don Giovanni (log)

[thampik]

Susan Rodriguez, a research fellow at Cal State Fresno, recently did a blind tasting experiment and discovered that her panel could not tell the difference between a wine that had been decanted for two hours and the same wine right out of the bottle.

"The people who set it up were flabbergasted," Rodriguez says. "They were sure they could taste a difference."

Don, wondering if you are taking the mick here - two pages of lyrical descriptions that end with the above quote.

[Larry McGourty]

That's an interesting question, fine cheese people say the same thing.

There is some evidence that oxidation has an influence on aromas, but probably not that great by the time the wine is bottled. Most likely it is more important if you are drinking an older fine vintage wine, or if the wine especially a red, was stored at cool cellar temperatures, it does need to warm up a bit. It does not seem to make as big a difference on younger wines, especially the kind of styles of wine we are drinking now.