iFavine iSommeliere Decanter

[SipAndANibble]

Hey,

I just stumbled across this piece of kit in a video online, which seems pretty intriguing. It’s essentially an electronic decanter that exposes a wine to air and can speed up decanting time from hours to minutes with purified air.

Have any of you heard of it before or tried one? Keen to hear opinions on it.

I quite like the idea as one of my gripes is the preparation and foresight required to enjoy wine sometimes.

Here’s a link to the website:
http://www.ifavine.com/Products/productDeta ... tId/3.html

[mychurch]

It’s not a joke, but a food mixer or a blender can help get the air in. Works for young wine, but for old ones there is no substitute for a good Audouzing

[SipAndANibble]

I don’t know if I’d use a blender as maybe it would unsettle the wine ! The iFavine thing seems to be engineered for the purpose.

And yeah interesting regarding autodozing, hadn’t heard of that before. I thought the conventional wisdom is that old wines are generally not decanted so as not to lose any magic.

[Ian S]

The exposure of old wines to air is something of a quasi-religious source of debate. Lots of beliefs, not a lot of science.

Audouze, comes from Francois Audouze, very much not the originator of the idea, but he's popularised it on a US wine forum. He himself loves *very* old wines and runs (paid) events to showcase them.

The idea is once a bottle is opened, pour a little to taste. If it's good, then the cork (or a cork) back in. Else leave the bottle open to the air for an extended period (he doesn't decant).

I've certainly seen old wines fall over rapidly with air, but also seen them improve with air. So I'd say try both options out and see if you lean one way or another. Don't expect the answer to be clear (though the need to believe that there *is* a simple universal answer does seem part of the US culture).