Decanting wine

A life scientific  
Research, field trials and a 'man kiss'
 

I am not a selfish man!

To prove I am not a selfish man I am about to share with you some of the findings from my latest research project and accompanying field trials or more accurately cellar trials, wine cellar trials. You see, at great personal expense, and great personal hardship I have been investigating 'decanting'.

Decanting is the process of passing a liquid from one vessel to another. In this case the liquid is wine and the vessels are the bottle it comes in and a decanter or carafe. A decanter is a container into which the wine is decanted – don't you just love definitions! A carafe is a container into which the wine can also be decanted – that's cleared that up then. As far as I can make out a decanter is up market as in 'I lease an apartment' and carafe is a little more down market as in 'I rent a flat'. Both decanters and carafes are mainly but not exclusively made of glass. The real differentiator, as far as I can see, appears to be that a decanter has a stopper and a carafe does not. Presumably if you lose the stopper to your decanter it is instantly downgraded to a carafe.

Glass vessels aside the question to be answered is 'will the wines in my cellar benefit from decanting?'

What put the question of decanting into my head I hear you ask. Well like (I suspect) most wine quaffers, I viewed decanting as a process employed only by the more wealthy oenophiles when serving up an older vintage that has 'thrown a deposit' (aka 'having sediment in the bottle', aka 'having sludge in the bottom'), or conversely, less wealthy oenophiles embarrassed by the label of a bottle of cheap plonk.

'Thrown a deposit', 'oenophiles', let me just say now that I am not a wine snob, indeed I may be verging on being the reverse. With wine, like my art 'I like what I know and I know what I like', although I am proud of the fact that my tastes do evolve, as is evident from my moving on from paintings of plump bare breasted women being attacked by geese to paintings of, just, plump bare breasted women. The fact is I find all the ridiculous terminology and flowery descriptions used by 'wine buffs' silly. 'It has a taste reminiscent of warm tarmac', how do you know, have you ever licked a road on a warm sunny day? I have some strange friends but I don't think any of them has ever got down on hands and knees and licked the A6 (although I once caught one licking a window - he said he just wanted to see what it was like!).

Back to the point in hand. Following a successful foray to the local wine warehouse, a foray where the 'wine-man' complimented me on my selection! (OK I know he was probably on commission but everyone feels better for a little ego massage), I settled down in front of the laptop with my receipt to see what comments others had passed on the wines in my selection. A comment that caught my attention was that one particular wine I had purchased (can't remember which one now) needed to 'breath' for a while and would benefit from being decanted.

Now, I'm quite familiar with letting the wine 'breath', although in truth as soon as the cork is pulled I tend to slop some of the wine in a glass. My theory being that surely it will 'breath' better in a glass than the bottle, a theory which I am pleased to report, has been supported by my recent research. Decanting on the other hand is not something I had ever considered, except of course on those rare but infuriating occasions when the cork disintegrates and you have to pour the wine from the bottle while holding the remnants of the cork back with the handle of a spoon (waste not want not, even if you have to sieve the bits out with your teeth as you drink).

Research into decanting at the Harris proved to be less than productive but I did come away with the latest compilation of Spike Milligan's writings 'Milligan's Meaning of Life – An Autobiography of Sorts' and a gorgeous Italian cookbook full of lovely pictures (sadly none of plump ladies, with or without geese). Harris by the way is the name of our town (city) library - funny name for a library but then Dennis is a funny name for a fire engine.

Google on the other hand returned 167,000 results in 0.13 seconds.

It would appear there are three reasons to decant wine...

In old wines decanting is used to separate the wine from any sediment it may contain. This involves the placing of the bottle upright for several hours or even days to let the sediment settle to the bottom of the bottle before gently pouring the wine into a decanter while watching for the sediment in the neck of the bottle with the aid of the back light from a candle. This does require some amount of forward planning, not one of my stronger points, but fortunately none of my wines come into this category so it's not really an issue.

In younger wines where there is no sediment the decanting exposes the wine to the air with the aim of letting the wine 'breath' and soften. Remember the theory of slopping some wine in a glass. The act of pouring and larger surface area of the wine in the decanter is apparently much more efficient than just letting the opened bottle sit there. The thought strikes me here that the stopper on a decanter is a bit self defeating, unless of course you are likely to get a wasp down your spout and then I suppose it becomes a judgement call.

The third reason to decant is purely aesthetic and to be honest a bright ruby red wine in a fine sparkling decanter can look pretty stunning. It is also as mentioned earlier a great foil for label shame. Not something I'm prone to, although to be honest, given the choice I wouldn't want some of the more garish labels that are around darkening my table, be it dinning or coffee. The other side to the label shame coin is of course label snobbery. This is aided and abetted by a technique call double decanting, where the wine is tipped back into the bottle ready for a 'look at me' moment.

There is a fourth reason to decant which the wine guru writers of the articles I have read on the subject seem to have missed, and that is the serving of wine from bulk container to table. The types of containers I am thinking of are barrels and those massive demijohns or damigiana and on a slightly lesser scale the ubiquitous wine box.

My earliest encounter with decanted wine was, I think, way back in the 70's during a refuelling stop in the Azores while on the way to a little deployment in the Caribbean. Despite only being alongside for half a day or so (topping up your average warship takes a little bit longer than topping up the family car) a lucky few managed to blag a couple hours ashore. Three or four of us spent those hours in the nearest bodega. We took a table outside in the dappled shade of an old wizened tree. The owner of this little bar brought to our table large jugs of the local red of which we partook with great enthusiasm. All too quickly our time on dry land was up. Unfortunately as this was an impromptu 'run ashore' none of us had any local currency and when we tried to pay with a $10 US note our previously welcoming host became quite animated, gesticulating and trying to break the world speed speaking record before dashing round the square waving the note at his fellow traders and innocent passers by. On his return, despite the obvious language barrier it became clear the guy didn't have the wherewithal to give us change. We eventually convinced him we didn't need any change (in those days you got more than two dollars to the pound and we had drunk a fair amount of his wine between us). It was at this juncture that I received my first 'man kiss' (very continental). I was quite taken aback, as were the others as he worked his way appreciatively around our little group, well all except 'Tommy Tucker' who, to be honest took it far too much in his stride for my liking.

Enough reminiscing, back to the present. Having done, even though I say so myself, an impressive amount of study and research, I'm still not one hundred percent on the difference between tannins and acidity. All I can say is I'm sure most of my regular wines have to varying degrees some of each, time I think for a little practical field work...

For my first decanting experiment I decided on a bottle of Lagunilla Rioja Reserva 2006. This is a favourite of mine, despite been a bit on the pricey side (for me), usually coming in at over £12 a bottle. However due to a recent supermarket offer I'd managed to stock up on a few bottles for considerably less (thanks for the tip-off Wend). With this wine I usually try to pull the cork and let it breath in the bottle for as long as I can before the 'I'll just have a little glass' monster surfaces. On this occasion, in the interests of science as soon as the cork was pulled using my old but faithful 'waiters friend' I poured a reasonable glass full and took a good slurp. A bit of puckering, a little tongue rolling and yes I'm getting tannin or acidity or both, not a lot but definitely some. With my control sample sampled, time to decant. Unfortunately, this early in my field tests I didn't actually have a decanter so I improvised with a jug from the kitchen cupboard. After what seemed a lifetime, but was in fact only an hour, I'd set the timer on the oven – scientific or what, a glass from the decanter (jug) was sampled and yes, much softer and even more enjoyable than the control sample.

While I finished off my decanted Rioja the thought came to me that even though this already excellent wine most certainly benefited from the decanting would a more everyday wine benefit the same? With that in mind the very next day I was off to the local supermarket, returning with one of those six bottle carriers populated with a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, a bottle of Shiraz (both allegedly high in tannin), a bottle of Pinot Noir, a bottle of Merlot (both allegedly lower in tannin) all of which were under £8 a bottle and couple of bottles of Good French Red (just for reference you understand and always good to have in at under a fiver). Over the next week or so I repeated my decanting experiment with the different grape varieties. With the exception of the Merlot the decanting worked its magic, even the Good French (an unspecified mix of grape varieties) was improved. So impressed was I that halfway through I sent off for a couple of carafes, not little delicate things but good sturdy rustic ones.

I can honestly recommend dear reader decanting. While some wines benefited more than others, no wines, as they say, were harmed in the making of this blog. The Merlot was a bit of a let down, I even tried hyperdecanting but it was still too tannic (is that a word) or acidic for my liking, but I will try another bottle from a different producer.

Hyperdecanting by the way is a method of forcefully aerating the wine, usually in a food blender. I don't own a food blender so I had to improvise with my stick blender...

Confession - I have occasionally referred to my wine cellar. This is a bit of bloggers license. I live in a first floor flat so a true cellar is out of the question. I have a built in rack for half a dozen bottles under the kitchen island between the fridge and freezer, this I refer to as my ready use store. My wine cellar is actually a couple of cardboard boxes tucked away in a place where the sun don't shine – one day I will get a proper rack.

I have to sign off now, I need to rap a bit of tape round my 'waiters friend', all that cork pulling has caused the plastic sides of the handle to come away – I remember having a penknife like that once when I was a boy scout.

Wonder what happened to my woggle!