Wines, no need to breath ?

Well, talking from experience I'd have to say I don't agree. I've opened wines that immediately smelled "closed" and lacked friut on the nose but which after some time in a decanter had "opened up" and revealed fruit in abundance. This has happened with very many wines and I don't think I'm just dreaming it. Even if you just poor some wine in a glass and leave it for a while the same transformation takes place. That said, many wines probably don't improve with exposure.

Who's Jane McQuity?

Marcello

Salut/Hi YorkshireSoul,

le/on Tue, 27 Jan 2004 08:12:33 +0000 (UTC), tu disais/you said:-

I disagree profoundly.

If you leave them too long, of course.

Not freshen, but it does improve its bouquet AND open up. She's completely up the creek on this one.

Wrong. Only yesterday, Mikulski, talking of his Meursault-Genevrières 2001 said that it would improve considerably when drinking at less than 5 years' old, if decanted 3-4 hours in advance.

I don't know what Ms McQuitty is up to. Perhaps she's been told to throw off the stuffy "Times" image and start being more "modern". In any case, I think - from personal experience that she's wrong all along the line on this one.

Final example. Over Xmas (we were in the UK with my brother), my brother brought up 3 bottles of Ch Beaucastel '95. We weren't sure how many we'd drink amongst the 11 of us round the table, so we opened (and decanted) 2 of them about an hour and a half in advance. About half an hour into the meal, it was obvious that we'd need the third, so I opened it and decanted it. Upon drinking it, the wine showed far less expressively at first, and was quite closed in. Lots of enthusiastic glass twirling DID get it to open up, but nevertheless, it was noticeably less expressive than the first two.

Same as I think of people who say that all guidelines as to what wine to drink with what dish are useless. Rubbish.

This unknowledgeable contributor thinks that Ms MacQuity (never heard of her) is just trying her hand at fast easy myth debunking, in order to get the sympathy of her average reader.

True most wines do not benefit from aeration, because most wines are just not worth drinking. On AFW we tend to be interested in those wines that ARE worth drinking, and for this MINORITY (quantitatively speaking) of world wine production I think that MOST good wines benefit from aeration.

Ms MacQuity seems to confuse decanting for aeration and decanting for letting sediment decant (properly speaking).

Good wines are not that fragile, and some wines that seem quite average during the first 4 hours turn out to be superb the next day...

Another myth is that mature wines must not be aerated too long, because THEY are fragile. In my experience, pure bull, some 1920's Bordeaux, red and white, gained enormously with 1 hour or more of air exposure.

Let me add one more thing. In my experience, wines that spoil during aeration are wines that were no better at opening time. If they cannot stand aeration, they were no godd to begin with.

Bye

Mike

Now don't hold anything back, Ian! :^D

I'm with you on this one (decanting for aeration), of course - especially in the case of Italian reds. I don't know why that should be, but a good, young Italian red will invariably need so much air to open that I often underestimate that, and as a result end up drinking only the last glass at its best. As for the why, that'd be good material for another thread on Italian winemaking techniques vs the rest of the world.

Tom S

thanks for summing up my opinion, Ian! Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

As others have already said, the notion that breathing and/or decanting is pointless runs contrary to fact. Ms. McQuity must either not have tried many ageworthy wines or have no palate. What I can contribute to this discussion is a little sense of *why* air may improve a wine's bouquet. Most wines are bottled under what we could term "reductive" conditions (reduction here meaning the opposite of oxidation). Part of what happens as that wine ages (but only part) is the gradual and slow oxidation of various components to give rise to what we think of as "bouquet" and "tertiary aromas." A very powerful red wine might remain in a reductive state in perpetuity. So, when you open one of these wines, exposure to atmospheric oxygen induces chemical reactions with the reductive flavors of the wine that produce more bouquet. FWIW, the same thing happens with coffee: the familiar aroma of fresh-brewed coffee is the result of oxygen-induced reactions that liberate odorants. That's why you should start with cold water that is used just before reaching a boil (more dissolved oxygen in the water). Come to think of it, oxidation also accounts for the familiar smells of onion and garlic...

HTH Mark Lipton

Salut/Hi Mark Lipton,

le/on Tue, 27 Jan 2004 10:38:34 -0500, tu disais/you said:-

Teehee, this has really got some of us going, hasn't it!!

Glad to see so many agree here.

Answering a few people's half asked question. what is odd here is that Ms MacQuitty is the highly (less so as of now by me) respected wine critic of "The Times" (of London). OK, "The Thunderer" is a shadow of its former glory since being bought by Mr Murdoch, but Jane MacQ is still the same person. She's drunk a heck of a lot of wine, and is reputed to have an excellent palate. That said, anyone who works for Murdoch has to be prepared to put their principles in abeyance from time to time.

I'd also add that there is a faint possibility that we've been caught by a clever troll who has partially quoted out of context.

Your exposé helped a lot btw.

Aeration can't hurt in two basic instances: 1) Young Tannic reds

I never decant without tasting first!!!

Hi all I own a book by some professors of the Davis University stating on breathing: What chemical reactions could take place on the wine surface to fundamentally improve the wine in one hour or two? In their opinion: none... FWIW, I opened a Beychevelle -97 only yesterday for an evening of slow drinking with wife, sort of celebratively. No decanting, the first glass showed a fruity nose with mainly black cherries in the taste and more than a hint of bitterness. A lean and delicate wine, no cedar or pencil shavings, not very special, really. Near two hours later the wine had changed considerably, however - the bitterness had disappeared, the wine was broader, jammier and more complex, real yummy and very, very pleasant :-) Now, the 64.000USD question is: Was it breathing or heating? Do we drink our wine too cold? Instead of 17-18 degrees, should it be 21? Hypothesis: Ideal serving temperature is 1 degree below ambient temperature? Hmmm, sounds a bit unlikely... Lafite at 45C in the Mojave desert... Anybody got a better idea? :-) Anders

Seems like we have McQuiity (and at least one other expert - Peynaud)

- not to be ignored lightly - ranged up against a mass of anecdotal evidence to the contrary. But, surely someone must have done, blind tests on this.....?

The scientist in me is reluctant to accept evidence from people (even myself!) when those people might be lead to expect one result or another from decanting or allowing to breathe. There may even be order effects - the 2nd tasting is better irrespective of whether it has had longer to breathe.

She is right as far as exposure to oxygen is not good for wine. However, I wonder if she has any taste buds.

Dimitri

I'm glad someone else brought this up. I'm convinced that the effect of subsequent tastes of a given wine - particularly red wines (due to the tannin) - is to partially and differentially saturate the palate in such a way that each successive taste will be different from the previous.

This is not to say that the wine itself doesn't change with exposure to air; merely that there are simultaneous effects occurring that might be impossible to separate.

Of course, I wouldn't expect this effect to be too noticeable in the nose of the wine, as the recovery time for the olfactory sense is much shorter than the palate. Still, there is such a thing as olfactory fatigue, as anyone who has ever shopped for perfume knows well.

Tom S

I haven't done a true blind test, though we did do an experiment a couple years ago where we opened one bottle and double-decanted, and then 2 hours later poured side by side same wine from freshly opened bottle- noticable difference.

Shouldn't be tht hard if you can get a group together. Take 4 pairs of bottles. Decant one of each. 2 hours later pour into their respective bottles, open other bottles of each pair. Serve in flights to guests. Have then vote on preference for A, B , or no difference.

Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

I have done this very experiment -- repeatedly. Often when I open a youngish red that I suspect may need airing, I'll pour off a portion into a decanter but leave behind the majority. Then, I pour both wines into glasses and serve, asking my victims which they prefer. I do admit that this is a single blind study, but the results are revealing: when asked, most people can discern a difference, though which they prefer depends on a host of variables that I can't control. Nonetheless, that there's a difference between the two -- and that many prefer the aerated wine -- is beyond question IMO.

Mark Lipton

But, Tom, what about when you're simply smelling the wine before and after aeration? I can attest to profound differences occuring in the nose alone.

As I stated to Dale, just decant part of a bottle and served both decanted and undecanted wine side by side for comparative tasting. If our tastebuds saturated that rapidly and easily, comparative tasting of a flight of wines would be a far less useful method than it is.

But olfactory fatigue would hardly explain the numerous instances of people noticing a wine's bouquet *increasing* as it sat in the glass.

Mark Lipton

Yup. See my other replies. I'm interested that you mentioned Peynaud, so I just went and looked up "aeration" in my English translation of "Le Goût du Vin." He makes a number of statements on the subject, but hardly seems dismissive of the general idea. To quote from his section entitled "When to Decant": It is definitely incorrect to decant old wines (wherever they come from) several hours before they are drunk because, following even a light aeration, their bouquet, fruit of the reduction process slowly achieved inthe absence of air, weakens with varying rapidity, depending on the wine. (p. 241)

There are also wines which smell a bit too REDUCED, which may improve upon aeration. (p. 242 -- emphasis his)

In summary, he doesn't seem to think that aeration long before serving is a good idea, but does seem to believe that aeration benefits some wines. That comes far closer to the views expressed in this thread than the summary dismissal of Ms. MacQuitty.

As a scientist myself, I appreciate your skepticism, Steve, but in all honesty it's often not a very subtle thing. Case in point was a bottle of 1961 Lynch Bages opened a year or two ago. Initially, there was virtually nothing in the nose, just a touch of alcohol and a hint of minerals (imagine the sinking feeling in yours truly as I smelled this supposed treasure opened for my wife's 40th brithday). Fifteen minutes after decanting, the wine was transformed into a rich, fruity, powerful claret with nuances of mushrooms and leather.

Mark Lipton

Dear Ian,

I' not trolling you, honestly. Nor do I think I have quoted MacQuity out of context, here is some more of the article..........

"To decant, or not to decant, that should no longer be the question, but it returns regularly from the dark ages of wine to haunt modern drinkers. Somehow, the old wine school's erroneous and risible belief that wine is alive and needs to 'breath' before it is ready to drink lingers"

The whole article is a dismissal of the practices of decanting and breathing.

Yorkshiresoul.

______________

And in fairness this is not the first post by this northern lad, none of which have resembled trolling AFAIK.

-E

Salut/Hi YorkshireSoul,

le/on Wed, 28 Jan 2004 07:38:08 +0000 (UTC), tu disais/you said:-

Thanks for replying so positively! You must admit though, that at first view, it looked as if it might be!

Risible or not, wine _does_ change when decanted, and/or in glass. The purpose of decanting (IMO) is mainly to avoid the need of leavng each fill of the glass in place a long time before drinking.

Well, she's wrong. Plain wrong. And I'm buggered if I can see why she has done this.