To decanter or not to decanter.

This is more of a question that I can't seem to find adequate information about elsewhere, so I thought I'd put it up for ya'll wine gurus here.

I've heard alot about decanting wines from various mentions in this group and other places. But, I can't seem to exactly understand when a wine deserves to be decanted or just to be appreciated out of the bottle. I mean, there are obvious visual points to appreciate when it comes to seeing your wine in some ornate decanter, but which wines deserve that?

I saw a ridiculously over-priced Riedel decanter here that one of my rich farmer friends wanted to buy. He wants me to tell him why wine needs to be decanted, and I told him I'm also not 100 percent sure.

Reply to
Mydnight
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Good question. There are actually two different reasons to decant a wine. In French, they distiguish the two processes with different verbs: carafer vs. decanter. In the former case, you are splashing a young (usually red) wine into a decanter to help aerate it, thereby helping soften tannins and "open it up." In the latter case, one is carefully pouring older wines that have thrown a sediment into a decanter, thereby removing the wine from the sediment and permitting the easy pouring of the wine.

Mark Lipton

Reply to
Mark Lipton

I forgot to mention that it's not always easy to know when to decant a wine. With older wines, if I see any sign of deposited sediment on the bottle, I'll decant straight off. With younger wines, I'll open them up and taste them first. If they taste "tight" or muted, I'll often pour some into a decanter to see if I can help open the wine up.

Mark Lipton

Reply to
Mark Lipton

Oooooh, I see. Thanks for the excellent information. Would you recommend the wines with the "cheap-wine" flavor that I mentioned before to be good for carafer(ing or being carafered?...I don't know much about French grammar, sorry). I did read that it's sometimes good to carafer some South American wines.

Reply to
Mydnight

I found a very strange, by modern standards, statement in the 1893 edition of The Epicurean by Charles Ranhhofer, the then recently retired chef of the old Delmonico's in NYC (perhaps the best restaurant in the US in the late 1800s.)

However important the dinner may be, still decanters of ordinary red and white wine must be placed on the table. The selection of the finer wines is the host's duty, he making his choice when ordering the bill of fare. In other words, it seems that a decent restaurant was expected to have decent red and white wines on the table, and ordering a better wine was an option at added cost.

Reply to
cwdjrxyz

In message "Mydnight" wrote:

I think that almost every young red wine will benefit from decanting or "carafing"; the humbler the wine, sometimes the proportionally greater benefit. The same is true of wines of medium age, though they may not need so long in the decanter or carafe before service. It is the older wines, already approaching, or even notionally past, their "drink by" date with which you have to take care. Use a tasting glass with any bottle you open - butler's perks - and look at the colour of the wine. If a red wine has turned brownish red or has a brown rim or sometimes a brown coloured tint under a watery rim, it almost certainly will not benefit from decanting. (That becomes even truer if you notice the aromas on opening the bottle but get less aroma i the glass or it fades there very quickly. That wine needs serving from the bottle and drinking quickly to capture its dying breaths.) Assuming you have not forgotten the bottle in a corner of the celllar and it is still, from the colour, in middle or lively old age, smell, taste, swirl the glass for several moments to aerate, smell and taste again: repeat the process until you have noticed development rather than collapse (or that bottle is empty, whichever is the sooner. If you do not get any sense that wine is improving to nose and mouth, do not decant. If you find it improving - and the odds are heavily in favour of that - decant or carafe it. I agree that if there is any evidence of sediment having been thrown decant with care or use a wine funnel with a fine filter. Decanters or carafes with flat bottoms and a large surface area of wine in contact with air on top of the wine are obviosly the best for quick effects for younger wines. Older ones will like a classic clarret jug or the like. Interestingly some Alsace growers I know decant their whites and young Barsacs and Sauternes can also benefit from the process.

Tim Hartley

Reply to
Timothy Hartley

I run the remains through a coffee filter. Why waste it? True, it's not as good as the first pour, but it's better than watching it swirl down the sink.

Jose

Reply to
Jose

"Mydnight" skrev i melding news: snipped-for-privacy@n59g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...

No need for French... To decant is the correct English word. You'll be decanting the wine when you pour it carefully into a decanter. By analogy you'll be caraffing the wine when you pour it into a decanter (or a caraffe which is the same thing, actually), but here the intention is different and you may really be splashing the wine into the caraffe :-) "To caraf", however, doesn't seem to me to be an established tense of verb - but what does this foreigner know? :-) Anders

Reply to
Anders Tørneskog

Mature wines should be opened and served immediately. Very young wines may benefit from exposure to air, which tends to soften them. Decanting exposes the wine to air more than merely opening the bottle. If it's a good, mature wine, DON'T aerate it. Open the bottle and serve immediately, and keep cork in when not pouring wine, to minimise contact with air. Exposure to oxygen ruins mature wine in a matter of minutes.

Reply to
UC

Unless you submerge magnets in the wine. Then it's fine.

Reply to
Young Martle

Or wait for the new moon and turn widdershins thrice, at the same time baying like a hound on heat.

Tim Hartley

Reply to
Timothy Hartley

"Timothy Hartley" wrote ...........

Yep - that sounds like Uranium Cranium to me..........

Reply to
st.helier

I generally like to have a taste first and then decide if decanting is necessary. If it taste just right out of the bottle then I do not decant, but if it is tannic or needs to open up then I decant. Sometime I also decant just for effect, say at a dinner party.

Reply to
vMike

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