Should You Decant?

You choose a bottle of wine. Perhaps it just came home from the store. Maybe a friend gave it to you. Perhaps you have been saving it for years and years because you've heard all the expressions about improving with age.

Why do we decant? Does it help? Can it hurt? Will you notice the difference?

Technically, there are two reasons to decant a wine. In practice, there is a third, much broader reason. Let's consider them in this order.

As a (generally red) wine ages, or in an unfiltered red wine, solids includung sediment and crystallized matter, often sugar-based will form in the wine. The process of decanting the wine, that is, pouring the wine from the bottle into a vessel with large surface area, will allow the solid matter to separate out from the clarified wine. In particular, this will avoid the problem as you near the bottom of an aged bottle of wine of getting the chewy particulate in your mouth. 

Honestly, there is nothing wrong with that chewy or crystalline stuff, but the sensory perception that we have is to viscerally react with an overwhelming "yuk." It doesn't feel like wine; and to your palate, it may not taste like wine, but it probably does, just not in a liquid version.

The second reason to decant wine is far more related to younger red wines. Particularly, if you decant into a vessel with a large surface area, more of the wine will be exposed to oxygen which is said to release the aromas and flavors that might or might not otherwise show themselves in these younger red wines. 

Is this true? There's one way to find out. Go to the store and get yourself a young, big, bold red wine. Let's assume you are going to begin drinking it at 5PM, knowing that it's always 5:00 somewhere. In a place where you won't be able to see the markings, mark three wine glasses with A, B, and C (or your favorite choices of markings). At 3PM, decant one-third of the bottle. At 4PM, decant another one-third of the bottle. At 5PM, have the butler, or your favorite child or pet, pour you a taste of the 3PM decanting into glass A, the 4PM decanting into glass B, and the undecanted wine into glass C. Again, make sure you can't see them.

Taste from one of the glasses. Make notes as to what you like and what you don't like and put that glass aside with the notes. Do that with the other two pours as well. Having done this blindly, now observe whether your notes indicate you noticed a difference. 

Then finish the bottle and open another one -- not because you are going to try another experiment, but simply because after all that effort, you need another bottle of wine.

The third reason is clearly the most important. You're out at a fancy restaurant and the server or, better yet, the sommelier has just brought a bottle of wine to your table and presented it. Don't you feel both powerful and cool at the same time if you ask them to decant it? Or, perhaps even better yet, if you are hosting some friends at your home and you pour them wine from a decanter, aren't they going to think you are just all that?

Returning to the last two questions, can decanting a wine hurt? In my experience, no. The only ways that decanting a wine can hurt are if you break something in the process or if you just despise cleaning decanters. For those that are afraid that once you decant a wine, you are forced to drink the whole bottle, that's not true. There is no rule that says that you cannot pour the remaining wine back into the bottle and cork it up to finish tomorrow.

Will you notice the difference? Honestly, I don't know.You might. You might not. Whether you'll notice the difference is really no different a question, although there are matters of degrees of difference, so to speak as any of these:

• Will you notice the difference between Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir or are the both just red wines?
• Will you notice the difference between Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa and Cabernet Sauvignon from Stellenbosch? 
• Will you notice the difference between Cabernet Sauvignon from Oakville and Cabernet Sauvignon from Mount Veeder?
• Will you recognize the difference between Cabernet Sauvignon from To-Kalon and Cabernet Sauvignon from Martha's Vineyard?
• Will you recognize the difference between Schrader Cabernet from To-Kalon and Alpha Omega Cabernet from To-Kalon?
• Will you recognize the difference between 2016 Schrader CCS and 2015 Schrader CCS?

It's all a continuum. I can't tell you what differences you can tell. It's all your continuum. There's only one way to find out.