decanting wine at restaurant

kwattro · Post by **kwattro** » Sun Nov 30, 2008 10:36 pm

hi,

i'm just wondering if there's some unwritten rules about having my wine decanted at the restaurant. So for instance, if i order a bottle and wish to have it decanted - should i just ask? or is it up to the restaurant to decide?

that takes me to the next question - is it worth the trouble? from what i've read, decanting normally takes a couple of hours - the only practical way to do this is perhaps requesting the restaurant to decant the bottle even before we arrive at the restaurant...i love to hear your experience.

obviously, i've never had my wine decanted, i always thought the restaurant would only decant $$$ wines.

tt.

Davo · Post by **Davo** » Mon Dec 01, 2008 1:06 am

Best is to decant at home, then replace into its bottle for the trip to the restaurant.

If you must decant at the restaurant make them do it at the table, or at least where you cane see it happen, especially if it is an exxy or rare bottle. One would hate to lose a glassful, wouldn't one.

bob parsons · Post by **bob parsons** » Mon Dec 01, 2008 3:25 am

Davo wrote:Best is to decant at home, then replace into its bottle for the trip to the restaurant.

If you must decant at the restaurant make them do it at the table, or at least where you cane see it happen, especially if it is an exxy or rare bottle. One would hate to lose a glassful, wouldn't one.

Agree with Davo.

Lot of showing off goes on here with the restaurants I am involved with. The staff are well trained and know their stuff but many times it is the customer who wants his choice decanted. Not always a top notch wine of course (I could list a few) but Joe wants to impress his know-how with his guests!

winetastic · Post by **winetastic** » Mon Dec 01, 2008 8:56 am

Although I usually BYO, I often ask restaurant staff to decant young wines to give them a chance to breathe a little.

Recently I have been enjoying more older wines, and generally double decant at home just before leaving - the trip would stir up the sediment too much.

There are no "rules" when it comes to decanting really, I would argue that a young and modestly priced wine will benefit just as much from some breathing time as a more expensive bottle.

griff · Post by **griff** » Mon Dec 01, 2008 9:15 am

You could also argue that with screwcaps allowing less oxygen ingress than cork, that young reds under screwcap deserve decanting regardless of price! Tell that to the sommelier

cheers

Carl

Loztralia · Post by **Loztralia** » Mon Dec 01, 2008 9:30 am

I would be pretty unlikely to order a young, expensive-ish red unless there was an opportunity to decant it for a reasonable amount of time. It seems a terrible waste of money not to allow something like that the opportunity to open up a bit.

The other week we went to Glass at the Hilton in Sydney for a bit of a wine bar blowout. We asked them to decant a 2002 Jack Mann shortly after arrival, which we only drank maybe three hours later. Obviously that's not possible at most dinners which aren't a full scale Roman banquet but I'm not sure I'd order a $160 bottle if it wasn't going to get something close to the best chance to shine.

Red Bigot · Post by **Red Bigot** » Mon Dec 01, 2008 10:08 am

Davo wrote:Best is to decant at home, then replace into its bottle for the trip to the restaurant.

If you must decant at the restaurant make them do it at the table, or at least where you cane see it happen, especially if it is an exxy or rare bottle. One would hate to lose a glassful, wouldn't one.

I've seen to many old bottles of wine just upended into a decanter to trust most restaurants to decant my older wines.

dave vino · Post by **dave vino** » Mon Dec 01, 2008 12:00 pm

If byo, decant at home, wash bottle out of sediment and pour back in and recork/reseal it.

If no byo, order it on arrival to be decanted at your table ask them to leave it there, then order your whites/aperitifs. That should give it at least an hour or so to breathe (make sure you sample first for faults).

Daniel Jess · Post by **Daniel Jess** » Mon Dec 01, 2008 1:34 pm

If you ask any restaurant staff (especially management) to decant a wine and they can't do it to the highest of standards, in my opinion that restaurant isn't worth dining at.

Red Bigot · Post by **Red Bigot** » Mon Dec 01, 2008 2:00 pm

Daniel Jess wrote:If you ask any restaurant staff (especially management) to decant a wine and they can't do it to the highest of standards, in my opinion that restaurant isn't worth dining at.

Well, maybe, but the food was good at some of the places I saw the bad decanting. One was a few years ago at Botanical in Melbourne, on a very busy night, the wine-waiter was talking to another waiter while pouring an older wine, stopped halfway through and raised the bottle upright again and then continued pouring merrily away. The food there was excellent and this instance may have been isolated, but I've seen similar things at quite good (food-wise) restaurants in Canberra and other places.

A couple of years in McLaren Vale ago we swapped a glass of our wine for a taste of the 1987 Eileen Hardy Shiraz the table next to us had bought from the restaurant and had been decanted by the co-owner. It was cloudy and full of sediment, horrible. Unfortunately it was towards the end of the meal otherwise I would have advised them to send it back, probably still should have, but most of it was gone.

There are certainly some restaurants I trust to decant, but not many, but then I don't often go to many highly-rated ones or to any that don't allow byo.

With wine group dinners, if I can't decant all the wines beforehand, it depends where we are dining, the last one (On Red) set up a table for our wine and gave us a couple of decanters so we could do our own thing, the one we are going to this week (Rubicon) I think I can trust based on past experience.

Waiters Friend · Post by **Waiters Friend** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 10:35 pm

Fully agree with Brian on this one. Especially when taking a fair number of bottles to a restaurant, I've appreciated past occurrences where a separate table holds the wines and decanters.

I also tend to double decant if there won't be enough time at the restaurant for the wine to breathe, or if I'm unsure of the availability of decanters.

Cheers

Allan

Mahmoud Ali · Post by **Mahmoud Ali** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 4:47 am

I think Dave Vino has it right. Even when I go to a friend's place, especially with an older wine with sediment, I decant at home, wash the bottle, and pour the wine back into it. Its always nice to have the bottle at the table.

Cheers.......Mahmoud.

Red Bigot · Post by **Red Bigot** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 8:47 am

I don't know if this is common or a trend, but last night I noticed a (brought-in) bottle being decanted at the restaurant where we were having a wine group dinner (Rubicon, great food and good service even on a busy night with several large groups). The technique was to use a paper filter to remove the sediment and not the old fashioned light and eye technique. I guess this makes sense if the wine has been shaken up a bit on the way to the restaurant.

I double-decanted all the pre-2000 wines we were drinking, the cork god was in a good mood, no cork issues with 15 bottles of wine.

dave vino · Post by **dave vino** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 1:29 pm

I asked this question on another forum about the filter paper and the answer was it could impart some flavours into the wine.

Mahmoud Ali · Post by **Mahmoud Ali** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 6:08 pm

Brian, Dave Vino,

The best filter is medical gauze or cheesecloth folded several times over and placed in a funnel. I'm told it doesn't affect the taste of the wine. I recently heard about this method to filter vintage port but it can also be used with wine. I'm not certain but it may have been popularized by Roy Hersh at For the Love of Port. I haven't used the method but apparently it will remove even the fine sediment and in many cases produce an extra pour.

Cheers.......Mahmoud