Decanting wine question

[lordson]

I've read a few articles on the internet about wine decanting

but they're not crystal clear

So young wines should be decanted for about an 1-5 hours

and how long should i decant older wines for?

I dont have a decanter yet, i suppose i would just pour a glass and let it sit

I tried this with the Hyland Cab 06 and noticed very very little changes when i first poured it, had a couple of sips, an hour later, two hours later. a day or two later it kinda changed, but for the worse i thought, on the second day the fruit died down, became flatter, less alcohol, definately less tannin

just asking because i have a bottle of Pen Bin 28 03 i wanna open soon and wonder if it will benefit from decanting

how does the taste change really?

thanks for helping a newbie out

cheers

[Daniel Jess]

So young wines should be decanted for about an 1-5 hours

and how long should i decant older wines for?

how does the taste change really?

From what I've been reading, decanting is the least of your worries for the moment. From a professional service point of view, young wines don't need decanting unless they're a) incredibly poorly made, acidic and most likely high in alcohol or b) they are tight wines that have potential to taste complex but haven't opened up yet (i.e. the tannins are 'unripe' and are restricting the flavour profile). By slightly oxidising the wine (by decanting) you can free up some flavours in a younger wine, however I would just double decant (do it twice) and definitely not let it sit for five hours.

Older wines require skilled decantation if there is sediment, otherwise sediment can enter the wine and make it a) gritty and b) unduly bitter. Decanting for whatever period of time is a personal choice, but rarely should you need to decant for more than 2 hours.

[JohnP]

OK,I'll take the bait.

The decanting of wine simply serves to aerate the wine - read oxidate. The oxygen reacts with phenols and produces a compound known as quinone. The quinone can react with other phenols, and thus continues the oxidative process.

Any bottle of wine contains over 1000 distinct chemicals. This is even more drastic considering that 95% of the total volume is occupied by water and alcohol. So it is within 5% of the volume that the differences between wines are seen.

Phenols do not only affect taste. They also give red wine color, and act as a preservative during the aging process. Most phenols exist in the form of tannins. These molecules help to preserve wine by their ability to absorb oxygen. When a wine turns brown due to oxidation, it is the phenol reaction with oxygen that causes this color change.

Grapes and the subsequent wine they produce contain hundreds if not thousands of phenolic molecules - the actual number is unknown even by chemists. The most noticeable characteristic of these compounds are astringency and bitterness, particularly in red wines.

Decanting a wine is therefore a highly complex chemical process and obviously best done in a laboratory .

Of course, if you are a wine drinker - and by that I mean a person who seeks to know more about wine by experiencing wine across its multitude of facets. How do you learn to decant - well decanting originally came about as a means of ensuring sediment was excluded from the wine being consumed, it was never intended as a means of 'maturing' the wine - at the time the scientific understanding was quite limited and phenolics wasn't even a word.

So should you decant, well according to my brother - who knows a little about the stuff - its NO and he is completely correct. WHY? Well because no-one can possibly predict the effects - some wines will 'improve', some will fall apart. I've seen great aged Bordeaux do both, as I've seen young barossan reds do the same thing. Of course, if you know a wine well, and you know it will be softened by aeration then you decant.

Now where is that full decanter of crouchen riesling I left here last week?

[Daniel Jess]

Now where is that full decanter of crouchen riesling I left here last week?

Now you're talking!

[Daryl Douglas]

Uuuurgghh

[Daniel Jess]

Pahaha.

[Jules]

While I'm sure there are a myriad of 'chemical processes' and whizzbangery that happens when you decant wine, but I think Lordson just wants some help not a science lesson.

For my mind all wines, including sparkling, benefit from being open for awhile. In my experience some wines will not get better, but the large majority will open up. I drink a lot of French wine and they are often better the next day, and if wine has heavy tannin then a couple of hours of decanting can help.

The same applies for old wine. Last night a friend and I opened a bottle of 1999 Leabrook Pinot Noir from the Adelaide Hills. When I first opened it it tasted oxidised (like port), but after 45 mins it was completely different and far more drinkable. I have had the same experience with some 1996 Bin 28's I had two years ago.

The long and short of this is it is learnt by experience, but open a new vintage shiraz or cabernet and leave some for the next day. You'll soon learn...

[Daryl Douglas]

- a decanter is an affectation, a glass water jug suffices
- don't decant unless it's to avoid sediment
- sediment is more likely in older wines, some younger wines have it
- older wines don't need as much air, drink very soon after decanting
- young wines benefit from a bit of time in glass, open with breathing
- it's interesting to follow the development of a young wine as it breathes
- your experiment with the Hyland should give some insights
- the Hyland range is good quaffer level (crap for some) at $12, not $18
- Bin 28 is entry level to Penfolds quality range but not really "premium"
- get a bottle of Jacobs Creek shiraz cab 06 to compare with the Bin 28

Open the Bin 28, pour a glass, suck some up through your nose, gag, then sneeze just joking - open it and pour a glass to explore over an hour - reseal the bottle and keep cool until the next glass. Do that in tandem with the JC s/c 06 (it's a pretty good quaffer) or you could do the same with a Hyland or Koonunga Hill from Penfolds. You need some palate calibration if you wish to further explore, particularly red, wine though the same applies to whites.

Cheers

daz

[winetastic]

- don't decant unless it's to avoid sediment
- sediment is more likely in older wines, some younger wines have it

Interesting I actually use the complete opposite approach:

- Decant almost all young red wines for around 1-2 hours, consume within 3-4 hours
- Don't decant wines near the end of their life, pour carefully to avoid sediment instead

Confused yet lordson?

[Daniel Jess]

Like I said, decanting and how you do it is a personal choice which none of us agree on. haha!

In a restaurant, I will always decant older reds for guests but use different decanter styles than I would for a young wine.

[lordson]

well i'm pretty confused.

the message i got from here was, experiment

since i'm up to my 4th bottle of wine ever, i have a ways to go i reckon

most of you fellas probably have hundreds of bottles under your belt.

honestly, i noticed very little difference between a newly opened bottle and leaving it for an hour or two, like i said earlier. just less harsh

i would really love to open up several bottles at a time and do some tasting experiments like that, but being a poor student i can't really. plus i'm the only person around who will drink the wine, so that makes it difficult too.

plus i can't study if i'm tipsy, so thats a limiting factor

ill grab a bottle of that JC shiraz too. thanks for the help, cheers fellas

[ufo]

Lordson,

As you can very well see, there is no straight forward answer to your question. Best is, just like some of the forum members mentioned, to experiment. I have experienced so many old wines benefited from decanting/breathing and so many others not. Same goes for the young wines. It all depends on the type of the wine, wine quality, wine making techniques used or how the wines is made. But there is no absolute truth about decanting eventhough every body seems to have an idea about it.

[DJ]

- a decanter is an affectation, a glass water jug suffices
- don't decant unless it's to avoid sediment
- sediment is more likely in older wines, some younger wines have it
- older wines don't need as much air, drink very soon after decanting
- young wines benefit from a bit of time in glass, open with breathing
- it's interesting to follow the development of a young wine as it breathes
- your experiment with the Hyland should give some insights
- the Hyland range is good quaffer level (crap for some) at $12, not $18
- Bin 28 is entry level to Penfolds quality range but not really "premium"
- get a bottle of Jacobs Creek shiraz cab 06 to compare with the Bin 28

Open the Bin 28, pour a glass, suck some up through your nose, gag, then sneeze just joking - open it and pour a glass to explore over an hour - reseal the bottle and keep cool until the next glass. Do that in tandem with the JC s/c 06 (it's a pretty good quaffer) or you could do the same with a Hyland or Koonunga Hill from Penfolds. You need some palate calibration if you wish to further explore, particularly red, wine though the same applies to whites.

Cheers

daz

What he said only, there are no rules unless you break them. It is very hard when you are starting out getting any idea of what you like and how to drink them. Don't worry too much about decanting until you have tried quiet a bit and possibly until you have cellared some wine.

At this stage try as much as you can - cellar doors or tasting events are a good way to go - read heaps, not only here but your newsapaper and think about subscribing to winefront.com.au or buying wine magazine - eventually you get a feel if you like a reviewers style. For a free read many here (including me) love torbwine.com especially for the tour diaries.

Do an introduction to wine course - great chance to try a number of wines next to each other. The only trouble with tastings is that wine often tastes much better with food. Protein takes out some of the tanin and makes wine taste softer and smoother

[Mahmoud Ali]

The only reason to decant a wine or port is to separate it from the sediment. Otherwise it is a matter of personal choice.

Many years ago Decanter, a British magazine,conducted an experiment on decanting. They took four Bordeaux wines, a '61 Mouton, an '82 Clerk Milon, an '89 d'Armailhac, and a '90 Mouton Cadet, all Rothschild wines, and tasted them from both bottle and decanter. The wines were tasted immediately after opening, immediately after decanting, an hour or two after decanting, and finally four hours after decanting. Hugh Johnson was one of the tasters as was Serena Sutcliff and Stephen Spurrier. Although each wine performed differently at each stage, they came to the surprising conclusion that, overall, the wines tasted best when opened and poured from the bottle. Pouring the wine immediately after decanting fared the worst. There was a humorous comment at the end of the piece about having to rethink the name of the magazine.

I guess the lesson from the experiment was that you either open and pour, or decant for several hours.

I decant almost all my red wines, the older ones because of the sediment and the younger ones, mostly recent purchases, because they are that, young, relatively closed and unevolved. If a younger wine is going to dissipate in the decanter, especially by the next day, it is not likely to be a wine that will cellar and not one that I will purchase again.

Lordson, if you find that decanting your wine make it "less harsh" then I reckon you have the answer to your question. Don't you?

Cheers................Mahmoud.

[Daryl Douglas]

- don't decant unless it's to avoid sediment
- sediment is more likely in older wines, some younger wines have it

Interesting I actually use the complete opposite approach:

- Decant almost all young red wines for around 1-2 hours, consume within 3-4 hours
- Don't decant wines near the end of their life, pour carefully to avoid sediment instead

Confused yet lordson?

You've selectively used a quote here, or didn't read the next line:

"- older wines don't need as much air, drink very soon after decanting"

nor the one after that:

"- young wines benefit from a bit of time in glass, open with breathing ".

I suggest you read the whole post a bit more closely.



daz

[KMP]

With decanting, as with pretty much everything in wine, there is a hell of a lot of dogma and very little real data. One piece of dogma is that aeration "opens up" a wine releasing more aromatic components with time, and softens the tannins. There is no (chemical) evidence that decanting softens tannins, certainly not in hours. I don't know of any work that has actually looked at the release of aromatics over time, say a few hours. There probably is a dusty MSc thesis in some library at the UC Davis or Roseworthy that has some information but who wants to look for it? (maybe when I retire.) I wouldn't mind betting that the aromatic bloom that occurs when a cork is pulled (or a screwcap is removed) is greatest immediately after than hours down the track, as equilibrium is reached. Its also quite possible that the most volatile components, especially if they are in small concentration, may be lost or at least significantly reduced over several hours of time, especially if a large surface area is exposed to air - like in a decanter. As my brother noted once you get past the water and the alcohol there ain't that much left in wine. And even though the actual weight of many of those components seems large don't forget that some (like alcohols and phenols) can be quite complex mixtures. Then there is the real problem of whether individual aromatic components (or combinations thereof) postively or negatively affect wine.

However there is a caveat here and that is that as individuals we don't all have the same capacity to smell (aromatics) or taste (sugar, acid etc) the many, many components of wine. My personal experience, over several decades, is that decanting for several hours does not "improve" many wines and I have confirmed that for myself by triangulation testing. The question then becomes are there people who consistently prefer decanted wine? Again I don't know of any studies on this. But I do know one individual who, in the two wines we have tested this, has preferred decanted wine while I have favored wine from a freshly opened bottle. But that is just anecdote. The most useful piece of information I got from that testing was that the two Marius wines tasted showed clear differences between decanted versus pop and pour for at least 4 individuals who tasted one or both wines. So if you want to know whether you prefer decanted wine get a couple of bottles of one or both of those wines and run your own test. You might be surprised by the results.

Mike

[Red Bigot]

but being a poor student

What are you studying at Melbourne Uni? Obviously nothing involving scientific method.

[Luke W]

Lordson

You've started a thread here that has led to some interesting insights. I see that you're giving many forum members the shits with your demands and lack of experience and number of contradictory statements - despite this I've gleaned some good information from some of your threads and sometimes they make me think a bit more about wine and that's what this forum is about.

I buy a few palletts of wine every year and share them with my friends - they entrust me to find good wine and to let them know the best way that I like to prepare it and drink it (although no doubt I don't share the same pallet - sorry about the pun). Decanting is a funny thing - in the old days it was part of the Grange ritual (so much sendiment you really couldn't drink the last third of the bottle if you hadn't decanted). However, I've bought wines that do better with decanting and some that do worse and I can't for the life of me work out a reason you can easily distinguish when to do it and when not to.

Take the Clarence Hill reds from 2000 - they were wonderful after decanting and sometimes became glorious specimens after up to 12 hours in the decanter but 3 or 4 years later don't need decanting to get to that. The Classic McLaren La Testa's were all better from the bottle but I found that the bottle had to be opened for about 2 hours to get maximum effect. I found decanting softened these wines too much in the mid term and they lost something. Another wine that responded well to decanting was a 2002 pinot from the Yarra last night - a previous bottle of this was too vegetative when I opened it and discovered that a few hours in the decanter removed this.

Experiment and find out for yourself what works - it can be frustrating and it can be fun.....

[JohnP]

Lordson, Are you getting the message yet? I truely appreciate your 'thirst' for knowledge, but as you will have noticed by the posts regarding decanting, which by its nature is a very simple thing , i.e. pouring wine from one vessell into another, there is a variety of viewpoints. And that is what wine is all about, it really is a 'personal' experience, its about how you feel about the wine you drink, its about how far your wine journey has taken you, its about people you meet, its about the experiences you have. We can all give you answers to your questions, but only you can make the journey. The journey requires you to travel the road trod by many before you. Tell us what you feel about your journey, where it takes you and why you like or dislike what you are experiencing. Act on those experiences, we will help a little bit, but you must develop your own narrative about wine as we all have done. Being a 'poor student' is really a poor excuse for not tasting wine and talking to others - each of which can cost you almost nothing if you wish to look outside this forum. I hate to be pompous but you need to seek a wider circle of personal experience, as well as coming here.