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To breathe or not to breathe (with apologies to the Bard)

Hi all,

After Michael (call me Uranium) Scarpitti's silly assertion that wine deteriorates the moment you open it, we carried out an interesting experiment yesterday that any of you could do (with a different wine).

Two remaining bottles of '97 Vox Dei Franco-Rumanian red.

We planned to dring them with a rather spicy lamb dish at 8.30pm, so at

7.30pm (over the protests of my wife, who felt I should be busying myself with serving pre-prandials) I decanted one bottle.

At 8.30, I opened the other. Ken Blake (a regular here) and I, both had two identical pairs of Spiegelau glasses. I marked one of each pair with a gold blob and took them into the kitchen for my wife to pour. She poured wine from the decanted bottle into one glass and the undecanted wine into the other. For the remaining members of the party, she poured from one bottle into the man's glass and the other into the wife's glass (in the case of Ken's wife and her glasses, these were paired).

So all four couples had access to both wines in identical glasses, but only Jacquie knew which was which. ALL of us noticed quite significant differences between the two wines, though opinions were divided as to which we preferred. I found that there was little difference on the nose, while Ken found one wine rather more forward and balanced, the other reticent. Of the 8 of us, the 6 who had some experience with drinking wines all preferred the same sample, finding that it was rounder and more expressive on the mouth, 5 people found it more expressive on the nose as well.

Both of those who had little experience with drinking wines, found the one wine more powerful, the other less interesting.

Jacquie then revealed that the wine the 4 experienced drinkers preferred, finding it more agreeable, was that which had been decanted an hour - and this for a 7 year old wine of little pretension. I find it interesting that the two of us who had less experience with wine (and who probably never ever decanted, therefore) both preferred the undecanted wine as being "stronger".

Anyone else care to try the same experiment, but with different wines?

Reply to
Ian Hoare
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Ian, do you always decant?

Reply to
Richard Neidich

of decanting expt.

I might actually try this with a cheap, designed-for-drinking-now (something Australian, maybe) vs. a slightly more expensive, more subtle (anyone care to recommend a sensibly priced, available-in-US Pinot, for example?) wine.

On a completely different note: my wine serendipity of the year (of several years) came in the form of "Reserve Sweet Red" from Madison vineyards, of VA, over the past two evenings. We must have picked this up by accident at our last trip down to C'ville, so opened it up for a random glass on Monday - and it's *good*! not really sweet (although certainly not dry) and with some decent complexity, extremely smooth, really very enjoyable (alone, and then with some pork chops pan-fried with apples/onions). I think it's no more than $6-8, so anyone down in the MidAtlantic I would strongly recommend this to.

Reply to
Ewan McNay

An interesting result, but one hour is not a lot of time. Many wine producers suggest two or more hours, and that is absurd.

The deterioration BEGINS the moment you open it, and continues in a linear fashion.

I think it is enlightening that those who are not corrupted by the 'breathing' myth and who approach it with 'open eyes' as it were, prefered the just-opened wine.

Reply to
Uranium Committee

Actually, the comparison was done 'blind', so mythology had nothing to do with it. The results are not surprising at all.

Dana

Reply to
Dana Myers

You'll note the term for oxygen in German is 'Sauerstoff'.

Reply to
Uranium Committee

I read that it was blind. It is illuminating that those unacquainted with the 'benefits' of aeration did not find it pleasing when it was presented to them. One perhaps has to be 'taught' to appreciate oxidation's 'benefits'. I'll skip that class if you don't mind.

Reply to
Uranium Committee

Just chiming here in to add that I found the difference between the two striking. It took no time at all to determine that I preferred the decanted wine.

Reply to
Ken Blake

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