Sediment and decanting

What are your thoughts on decanting for sediment? Sometimes I get a bottle that has thrown just a bit of sediment (just enough to see; maybe several pinheads worth) and I wonder if it's worth decanting for that. Certainly if there is a significant amount I'd decant (maybe the area of a thumbnail on the side of the bottle).

What does sediment do to the taste of red wines?

Jose

Reply to
Jose
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Sediment from red wines can taste bitter to many people. This is most likely to be noticed for full red wines with harsh tannins that require some age to soften and that often throw quite a bit of sediment. If the sedimet is fine, it may make the wine somewhat cloudy, and that bothers some people. In the 1800s many wines were somewhat cloudy, but that often was not noticed because wine glasses often were colored, heavily cut, enameled, had gold applied, etc.I would say the tolerance for sediment in a wine is likely to vary quite a bit from person to person.

Decanting is not the only way to control sediment. If the sediment is rather heavy, just standing the bottle up for a while and then pouring carefully often avoids the sediment, except for the last portion of the wine. A wine basket and careful technique allows pulling the cork and pouring wine without disturbing the sediment. I have even seen a mechanical device that clamps the bottle and slowly tilts it to pour as a crank is turned. I believe such devices were sometimes used in France in the 1800s. There was even a special version that was made for those huge Champagne bottles that can hold 16 or more normal bottles of Champagne. Some of the wine machines that preserve and dispense wine using an inert gas have tap tubes that can be adjusted just above the sediment in the wine to avoid it.

Reply to
cwdjrxyz

How about using a pipette to suck the sediment out of the bottle, and avoiding the whole decanting thing?

Jose

Reply to
Jose

Jose wrote in news:hlQbf.6689$Kv.2648 @newssvr22.news.prodigy.net:

But the decanting also aerates the wine and many wines benefit from the process.

Reply to
jcoulter

I remember reading long ago that one of The Burgundy houses did more or less what you suggested before shipping the wines to certain markets - was it Louis Latour? They used a tube and a vacuum device to draw out the sediment before final corking and labeling of some of the wine. Sediment has never been much of a problem for me, but it could be if you opened an older wine that had just been shipped or if the wine were sold on a small ship. Of course if the wine is kept several years before opening, it may again throw some sediment.

Reply to
cwdjrxyz

I suggest that you try that. You'll find it to be an exercise in frustration and gain a much higher regard for decanting, which is a surprisingly effective process if you have a steady hand.

Tom S

Reply to
Tom S

Since sediment is polymerized tannins, it tastes bitter.

Mark Lipton

Reply to
Mark Lipton

Hi, Mark -

Something about the polymerization process seems to take away much of the astringency I'd expect to taste in sediment. IOW, I detect more bitterness in young wines than I do in the resulting sediment after extended aging.

AFAIC, sediment in wine that hasn't been properly decanted damages mouth feel - which is not to say that I perceive it as bitterness, per se. Does that make sense to you?

Tom S

Reply to
Tom S

Yup, it does make sense. The bitterness of tannins (according to the redoubtable M. Peyraud) is associated with its periphery, so as the tannin molecules grow bigger, the bitterness decreases with surface-to-volume ratio. It stands to reason that sediment, with its much smaller S-to-V, would be even less bitter -- but I do note a bitterness in the dregs.

Mark Lipton

Reply to
Mark Lipton

Tom,

I agree completely. At a recent dinner, the sommelier offered up a '01 Rioja, which was to be decanted. I asked for a light pour of it, prior to the decanting. A friend and I sampled the pre-decant taste, and cataloged our impressions. When the decanted glasses came out, we were able to do a bit of A-B (though the un-decanted wine had now sat in the glass for 30 mins, or so), and both agreed that the decanted version was smoother. My friend could not really tell any difference between the two, from first taste of the bottle pour, to the decanted pour, but I could find definite "tactile" differences with the mouthfeel. The two pours were good and the aromas and actual taste(s) were similar, but there was a tannic "edge" in the mouth of the first. I can describe it best as having a multi-faceted object in my mouth, while with the decanted wine, it was closer to a sphere, with no edges, or corners - just more subtle and supple with no "edge."

Hunt

Reply to
Hunt

What is the difference? When decanting, you careully pour wine out of the bottle (but not all of it). The first little bit that comes out could just as easily go into a glass (your "light pour") and be essentiallly the same. No?

Jose

Reply to
Jose

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