Decanting Wine

Is it really worth Decanting wine? Yes, well for reds anyway it will only open out the wine making it smoother and expressive. So what is Decanting and how long should it be left until drunk? Decanting is when you pour of a bottle of wine into another vessel, ideally a decanter but a blender, pitcher, or an old glass vase will do. Yes, a blender this works, but not if the wine has sediment as we would want to remove this from the decanter. With young full wines you’re going to need to leave the wine sometime in the decanter as these wines are tight and powerful about 2-3 hours will give them enough time to balance out, with our older wines 15-20 years old, the wine has become delicate in the bottle, stripped back of all the tannic attack and dark berry expression due to the aging processes so will need far less time to open out about 1-1.5 hrs should do the trick depends if it’s a lighter grape like pinot noir, with a very old wine 20+ years 30 minutes will be all that is needed. So how do you Decant, first you will need to leave the bottle lying down (some say standing up) for a long time so all the sediment, a cloud type substance is all in the same place, use a candle underneath the bottle a foot away so as to see into the bottle better, but you could use a ipad or torch on your phone. Open the bottle being careful not to move the bottle much, once opened pour slowly into the vessel keeping an eye on the sediment and that cloudy structure as soon as that gets close to the neck of the bottle stop pouring you will have to taste the wine to make sure it’s not faulty then leave on the side for an amount of time, the best decanters are the ones with the largest base, and if there is a stopper on the decanter keep this off the vessel you may put this on once the wine is ready to drink, double decanting is when you wash out the wine bottle of sediment and pour the once ready to drink decanted wine back into the bottle so you can re-cork the wine if not finished.