Bob's Blog: Give it Air
OPINION: “Have a look at this” said a good friend as he passed me a cutout from The Times with the heading “The wine gadget sommeliers say can make your £10 bottle taste better”.
The longer the period between decanting the greater the loss of aroma intensity, he claimed.
Peynaud believed that only wines with a sediment should be decanted and then only just before serving. If the wine needed decanting to help correct a fault such as reduction the same affect could be achieved by swirling the glass.
allowed much air exposure. I recall a 12-vintage tasting of Chateau Lafite back to 1929. Many of the tasters started with the youngest wine and worked back toward the ’29 while a few of us started with the oldest wine first. The 1929 Lafite was at first rather closed and slightly musty, but it opened beautifully with a brief display of fragile fruit and floral characters. In 20 minutes the wine had completely collapsed and tasted of old cigar buts.
The golden years for decanters must surely have been in the 18th and 19th century before winemakers were able to effectively clarify wines, most of which would throw a sediment. Today it is becoming increasingly fashionable to replace fining and filtration with a message on the back label warning that the wine might need decanting.
To test the merits of aeration I have, on a couple of occasions, aerated a wine before serving it blind alongside the same wine that had been freshly poured, and invited students in my class to choose a preference. The aerated wine won by a narrow margin in both cases. “Not much difference,” was the response from most of those who took the test.
I favour Peynaud’s approach. I seldom aerate wines before tasting them in a large glass which I swirl vigorously to chart the change, if any. A movie reveals more about a wine than a simple snapshot.
