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Victorwine wrote:Tom wrote,
My money's on the likelihood that the nose and berries died of exposure in the first instance!
My experience says otherwise, “deep breathing” could bring the fruit forward. I myself immediately after opening a bottle of wine take a deep “sniff” to smell the wine and sip to taste the wine. If I feel it could benefit from decanting I would do it but if not I would just let the bottle sit there for about an hour or 45 minutes with the cork loosely put back into place before dinner. (It’s like leaving fruit on the kitchen counter to “ripen” some more).
Salute
Tom V wrote:The majority of wines don't need to be extensively aged, sort of follows that the majority of wines don't need to be aggressively breathed, no?
Rahsaan wrote:Tom V wrote:The majority of wines don't need to be extensively aged, sort of follows that the majority of wines don't need to be aggressively breathed, no?
Sure it depends on the wine, but where is the evidence of all these newbies sitting around letting their 2 Buck Chuck decant for 7 hours prior to hamburger dinner?
Rahsaan wrote:Tom V wrote:The majority of wines don't need to be extensively aged, sort of follows that the majority of wines don't need to be aggressively breathed, no?
Sure it depends on the wine, but where is the evidence of all these newbies sitting around letting their 2 Buck Chuck decant for 7 hours prior to hamburger dinner?
Sam Platt
I am Sam, Sam I am
2330
Sat Mar 25, 2006 12:22 pm
Indiana, USA
Dale Williams
Compassionate Connoisseur
11173
Tue Mar 21, 2006 4:32 pm
Dobbs Ferry, NY (NYC metro)
Steve Slatcher
Wine guru
1047
Sat Aug 19, 2006 11:51 am
Manchester, England
Brian Gilp wrote:Some 20 years ago I took a wine appreciation course and the instructor (Richard Vine) stated that there had been studies where tasters were provided two samples of a number of wines; one decanted (not sure of the length of time) and the other PnP and by far the PnP wines were preferred. Wish I knew where to find the results of those studies. Still to this day I rarely decant a wine. Maybe 5-6 a year.
Victorwine wrote:Just the other night my niece at her engagement announcement dinner handed me a glass of red wine with a “frothy head”. Excitingly (with lots of hand waving), I asked what the heck did you do to this wine? Calmly she explained a technique called “hyper-decanting” (age a wine 5 years in just seconds by placing the wine in a Bullet blender). Just shook my head, 18 years of home winemaking/ evaluating fermenting wine and young wine samples and degassing them using thermal baths or stirring plates, never did I think of using a blender
Steve Slatcher wrote:Peynaud is of the opinion that it is only faulty wines that need to be exposed to air before drinking. See his book "The Taste of Wine". That opinion is based on "dozens of controlled expriment" he carried out and "resulting conlusions are those given in our Traité d'Oenologie", presumably a Bordeaux University journal. That is the closest I have found to a reference. Jancis Robinson has written similar things, perhaps following Peynaud.
I tend to agree with them. I have noticed that mild reductive notes can be dealt with by a vigourous double-decant, but that is about it. I have never noticed tannins soften with a long time in an open bottle. Sure, the wine changes, but generally towards oxidation IMO. Some might like that, but I don't. All just my opinion/view of course - I'd just encourage others who are not sure to find out for themselves.
In practice, I usually PnP whites, and decant reds shortly (for convenience maybe an hour or so) before eating. If the red is old the decant removes sediment, and if it is young there may be sediment too and it might help with any reduction.
Bill Spohn
He put the 'bar' in 'barrister'
9550
Tue Mar 21, 2006 7:31 pm
Vancouver BC
Steve Slatcher wrote:Peynaud is of the opinion that it is only faulty wines that need to be exposed to air before drinking. See his book "The Taste of Wine". That opinion is based on "dozens of controlled expriment" he carried out and "resulting conlusions are those given in our Traité d'Oenologie", presumably a Bordeaux University journal. That is the closest I have found to a reference. Jancis Robinson has written similar things, perhaps following Peynaud.
1996 Pequera – the first stage of an interesting experiment that I’ll explain fully later. Sweet briary nose with some blackberry and tobacco, well developed wine, tasty with a medium long sweet finish with good acidity. About what I’d expect – I am slowly working my way through a case of this wine.
1996 Pesquera – yes, they had opened a magnum, decanted half and then put the balance in a normal size corked bottle, and it was a totally different wine. This one showed a slightly metallic nose, was lighter weight in the mouth, and had a medium length finish with enhanced tannins. First half of the bottle had 4 hours air; second half had maybe 30 minutes.
Bill Spohn wrote:Steve Slatcher wrote:Peynaud is of the opinion that it is only faulty wines that need to be exposed to air before drinking. See his book "The Taste of Wine". That opinion is based on "dozens of controlled expriment" he carried out and "resulting conlusions are those given in our Traité d'Oenologie", presumably a Bordeaux University journal. That is the closest I have found to a reference. Jancis Robinson has written similar things, perhaps following Peynaud.
I'll call BS on that. While it is clearly a mistake to early decant old wines that may crash while waiting to be drunk in the decanter, there are many wines for which decanting for airing is mandatory, not optional, and I don't just mean vintage Port. To say that a Barolo is 'faulty' because it doesn't show best the second it pours from the bottle is ridiculous, even if Peynaud said it (I haven't read the original treatise, so don't know if his statement was intended to apply to Bordeaux only).
Here is my most recent example.
A magnum of 1996 Pesquera had one bottle removed several hours before tasting, and the other bottle in the magnum was immediately sealed up again in a single bottle to prevent undue airing. The results were very interesting and I defy anyone to identify them as the same wine from the same bottle - they showed totally differently and the one that was decanted and aired was far superior. Ten experienced tasters, tasting blind, had no clue the wines were in any way related, much less from the same bottle.1996 Pequera – the first stage of an interesting experiment that I’ll explain fully later. Sweet briary nose with some blackberry and tobacco, well developed wine, tasty with a medium long sweet finish with good acidity. About what I’d expect – I am slowly working my way through a case of this wine.
1996 Pesquera – yes, they had opened a magnum, decanted half and then put the balance in a normal size corked bottle, and it was a totally different wine. This one showed a slightly metallic nose, was lighter weight in the mouth, and had a medium length finish with enhanced tannins. First half of the bottle had 4 hours air; second half had maybe 30 minutes.
Mike Pollard wrote:Sorry but have to call BS on this. An N of 1 versus a career in wine science is simply not convincing. In any case its almost certain that Peynaud, like any reasonable wino, would not have said that all wines are not affected by decanting just that his experience points to the most obvious effect being with faulty wines. I'm sure we have all experienced wines changing over time either in bottle, decanter or glass; the latter being the situation I see most change probably because I swirl the glass a lot which would lead to much faster loss of the more volatile components.
It should also be pointed out that the example given above is not a serious test of the effect of decanting. If anyone is really serious about seeing if they can identify decanted versus pop-and-pour they need to do it blind, as a triangualation test and without things like food etc. Its really not that hard to do. I've put 13 wines through this and only 1 was improved by decanting (2002 Paradigm Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa valley), 4 were not (including a 2001 Paolo Scavino Barolo tasted in 2007, so there is my N=1!) and the remainder could not be distinguised as having any changes.
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