Decanting

When do people drink a decanted wine? If you're like me, you probably have a higher percentage of your wines that you drink in restaurants decanted than the percentage of wine that you drink at home. In other words, for every 10 bottles you drink in restaurants, you might have 2 decanted while at home, you decant far less than 1 of 10. 

Why?

In my case, the answer is easy. I'm lazy. It takes more effort to decant a bottle. And, then, once I've finished the bottle, in addition to cleaning glasses, I have to clean a decanter. And, I have to dry a decanter.

Let's assume, however, that you are not as lazy as I am. When should you decant a wine and if you choose to, how should you do it? What are those one or two key steps that we leave out?

The single most obvious reason to decant is to get rid of the sediment in the bottle. Even if you don't mind the taste of it and honestly, I don't although it's different from the wine, it looks ugly. Which wines have sediment in them? Wines that have been aged. So, for example, drinking today in 2021, a 2019 vintage red wine should not have any sediment that you will ever notice, but a 2009 vintage red wine, no matter how well it is stored and how regularly the bottle is turned will have sediment. Proper decanting, something that I don't always do and likely you don't either, will both separate the wine from the sediment and maximize the amount of wine you are able to extract from the bottle.

What is the easiest way to tell if a bottle of wine has sediment? Take that bottle that was stored horizontally and let it sit upright for an hour or so. Then inspect the bottom portion of the bottle against a very well-let, bright backdrop. If you can't see sediment, one of two things is going on: either the bottle has little, if any sediment or the bottle is just too dark to tell.

The other common reason to decant wine is to aerate it. The question is whether this is a positive benefit or a negative detriment in some cases. When we aerate a wine, we expose it to additional oxygen. Fully mature wines cannot stand too much oxygen, less they become oxidated. So, there is an argument to not decant wines without significant sediment in the bottle when fully mature. However, the fuller and more effusive the flavors and aromas, the more a wine and its drinkers might benefit from some level of oxidation. Think Barolo.

When you do decant, one of the keys, and by my own admission, once again I am too lazy and rarely do this, is to decant against a bright, well-lit backdrop. The keys are to decant in a slow, but steady pour, first wiping the rim of the bottle to ensure no sediment escapes from the rime, watching not the pour, but watching the sediment at the base of the bottle. Make sure that the sediment stays there, but that the pesky liquid at the bottom (you know, the wine) gets into the decanter.

One of the things we might learn from this is that many top-end restaurants get this all wrong. Some automatically decant through an aerator every bottle of red wine. It's just wrong.