Breathing and vapors

Salut/Hi Michael Scarpitti,

le/on 6 Sep 2004 18:56:36 -0700, tu disais/you said:-

Dana said

Rubbish.

The whole world is out of step except you. You deny the validity of all theose who have politely suggested that you might be mistaken and you come up with nonsense statements.

In case you didn't know, the tongue has nothing to do with the subtleties of wine tasting. All you can _taste_ as opposed to smell, is salt, sweet, acid and bitter. Or will you now say that alcohol cleans off the smell cells at the back of the nose? Not to me.

You've just joined my twit filter.

Stuff 'n' nonsense. How do you explain that the SECOND bottle (of the same wine) tastes better than the beginning of the first bottle, when the second has NOT been opened until just before it is served?

The alcohol cleans the palate, and with the food and aroma, makes the wine taste better. It has NOTHING to do with aeration.

Prove it. Show us a gas chromatograph trace that shows NO chemical change in a wine upon exposure to air. In the absence of that, your statement is nothing more than an unproved assertion.

Mark Lipton

I have generally not found this to be true. Mostly, I have found just the opposite. There have been exceptions, as there always will be to any generalization about wine, but certainly your statement above is not the universal truth that you seem to be suggesting that it is.

The proposition contained in your OP in this thread goes against all of my experience in consuming wine and that of every experienced consumer that I have ever heard express an opinion on this subject.

Vino To reply, add "x" between letters and numbers of e-mail address.

I'm not trying to be rude but how long have you been drinking wine? The second bottle tastes "better" because your palate has been calibrated by the first bottle. The fruit will appear to be sweeter and the tannins will be softer because your mouth has been coated with the tannins, etc. Bi!!

Hi all There was a guy calling himself Vega something sometime ago sounding much like Mr. Scarpitti of today... Anybody care to check out these posters to see whether they are the same guy? Anders

I've been drinking wine for 24 years, and been fairly serious about it for 12. I'm part of several regular tasting groups, and it's usually not particularly hard to spot which wines were opened and decanted in advance, and which are just opened. No serious taster I know claims that wine doesn't change with aeration. None.

Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

This topic came up many threads back and, IIRC, was never settled to my complete satisfaction. It's possible that it may never be, but I thought I'd use this opportunity to throw it out again for discussion. With apparently one lone exception, everyone here agrees that *in general* SOME red wines improve following *some* exposure to air. The reasons for such improvement (when it occurs) can be (and are) debated endlessly. Most of the reasons I have heard relate to beneficial changes that occur to the wine itself. I have often wondered how much, if any, of the improvement comes from the escape of undesirable compounds that were either bottled with the wine or formed after bottling. I'm not necessarily talking about the usual suspects such as SO2, mercaptans, etc. There may even be compounds that have little or no odor themselves but somehow degrade the wine. I readily admit to profound ignorance here, but I can't help but wonder.

Vino To reply, add "x" between letters and numbers of e-mail address.

It's not unusual for some stink to "blow off" after opening. Often, it's mercaptans or volatile acidity. I've noticed this the most in older reds and heavily sulfured whites.

Mark Lipton

Along that same note, Dale, I usually will smell and taste, the wine, unless I am the host and have to pass/fail on the bottle, after the pour, even when not decanted. Then, after just a swirl, or two, will repeat both aspects of my ritual. With just the aeration of the swirling, both the nose, and the taste usually change to a noticable degree.

Hunt

It's a well-documented process by which wine is influenced by exposure to air. That's not nonsense. We're not splitting subjective hairs over Tmax vs. Tri-X here.

Of course, your perception of a wine may change as you drink wine and eat food. So I don't know what's going on exactly with your palate - but I can say factually that wine *does* change upon exposure to air.

It's possible that the second bottle of the same wine tastes better for non-chemical reasons, of course, in fact, I'd even say that's probable.

Cheers, Dana

Of course!

Yes, precisely! Those who claim a second bottle tastes better because it was opened longer are refuted by my experience that a newly-opened second bottle of the same wine ALWAYS tastes better than the beginning of the first bottle of the same wine.

My claim is that if you open two bottles of the same wine at the same time and begin drinking the second after at least an hour, the second will taste better than the first one did when it was first opened. If you open the second bottle after at least an hour after the first, it STILL will taste bertter than the beginning of the first bottle, because of the happenings in your mouth caused by drinking the wine, not by aeration.

In other words, aeration has nothing to do with it.

How do I know? I have had several bottles of the same wine many times, and the second ALWAYS tastes batter than the first, no matter when it is opened.

Tee-hee. You must be joking.

They attribute it to the wrong cause.

But change for the better? Nah!

In most cases they didn't attribute it to any cause at all. They simply agreed in some way or another on a general proposition that directly contradicts your own as expressed in your OP and to which you have tenaciously clung despite the arguments of people in this group who have probably forgotten more about wine than you will ever know.

But who knows, maybe the rest of the people in the world are crazy and you really are the only sane one.

This is my last contribution to this thread. It started out with one of the silliest propositions I have ever seen on AFW and has gone steadily downhill ever since despite the best efforts of several posters to salvage something from it.

Vino To reply, add "x" between letters and numbers of e-mail address.

Who claimed that the second bottle tastes better because it was open longer?

Sure. On this we agree. Happenings in your mouth, happenings in your head, and happenings in the glass, they're all part of the end result.

That's where we're missing world-peace. Aeration mostly certainly influences a wine, and 22 years of wine appreciation has taught me that a little exposure to air is often good, too much exposure to is usually bad - independent of the other effects you mention.

These effects are not exclusive.

Sure. I've noticed that when I taste wine without expelling it, all of the wines start tasting better as time goes on. ;-)

Dana

I would say that all wine benefits from exposure to air, and young reds particularly so.

I think that old wines also benefit, I have seen this with red and white top Bordeaux from the 20's for example. These wines not only improve, but change radically in the space of 2-3 hours, it is worth tasting them every half hour to see what is happening.

Anyhow, I think MS is having fun poking at us.

Mike

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France email link

Salut/Hi Vino,

le/on Tue, 07 Sep 2004 21:21:11 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

I'd go further, Vino. I don't think I've ever met a red wine which didn't improve with some exposure to air - and I'm not talking about opening the bottle a couple of hours before and leaving it, but by decanting/carafing. I know of many white wines which do too. For example, many serious white burgundy makers decant their wines before serving them, as do several of the best Bergerac wine makers. I can't speak to what the bordelais do, as I don't often taste white Bordeaux at the property. I have doubts about whether German whites do, but I've had some Gruner Veltliners which benefitted by it (right Michael P?).

No, I don't think this is the case. I think that the decanting process and exposure to oxygen allow some of the components to form/develop. They were "waiting" for the moment, and decantation kick starts it.

This is a non experiment I've done dozens/hundreds of times. Take two bottles of the same wine. Decant one and leave the other sealed. Then 1 hour or 2 hours or whatever, open the second and taste them against each other. Do it double blind if you like so one person pours in one room and the second tastes, so you have no idea which was which. I don't do it anything like as formally. If I don't know whether my guests (3-4 meals a week 6-8 months a year for the last 10 years, gives me a _some_ small experience) are going to need one bottle or two of a particular wine, then I'll decant one, and leave the other unopened. If the second is needed I'll open and decant immediately. You can almost always tell the difference, and -in my opinion - the first bottle shows more on the nose and (in the case of reds) is often less tannic. However once poured into glasses and swirled around, the second can "catch up".