Wines I'm Drinking: Ranting about Decanting

Of all things related to the enjoyment of fine wine, I’d say that decanting is the most misunderstood. I find myself thinking about decanting wine today because of a recent disappointment at a local Italian restaurant with a server that ought to have known what to do when presented with a 25-year-old wine – a 1997 Chianti Classico I brought to a family meal celebrating my mother’s 92nd  birthday – but didn’t. 

There are three reasons to decant wine. First, I sometimes decant simply because wine – whether red, white, or pink – looks pretty in a piece of quality glassware. The motivation here is purely aesthetic, having nothing to do with the age or condition of the wine. 

Second, a very young wine that has the potential to age will often show better if given some air before it’s consumed. This is the situation most people think of when the subject of decanting comes up. “Let the wine breathe,” we say. Decanters are mostly designed so that a full 750ml bottle of wine will fill the container to its widest point, the object being to greatly expand the surface area of the wine, optimizing exposure of the liquid to oxygen. The act of pouring the wine into the decanter also exposes the wine to air. The result of decanting is thus to expose the wine to considerably more air than it would receive if served from its own bottle.

In this second case, the idea is to artificially age the wine a little bit – although decanting a young wine, while it often makes some difference, can only do so much; an age-worthy wine will benefit most from time in bottle before it’s consumed. The process really can’t be accelerated very much.  

It’s important to note here that a young wine generally has not thrown a deposit of any kind (see below). Therefore, how it’s handled before and during decanting is often not critical. Note also that “letting a wine breath” is entirely pointless if the wine in question isn’t the sort that benefits from ageing. There’s no need to decant a light rosé, for example (but see the first reason above). 

The third and most important reason to decant a wine is to separate an old wine from any deposit that may have formed in the bottle during ageing. Natural wine is a living thing. As fine wine ages, various chemical reactions occur in the bottle that are responsible for the remarkable evolution that can occur that turns a tight, astringent, woody youngster into a soft, silky, delicately fruity wonder. 

I don’t understand the chemistry entirely, but, if my understanding is correct, as a young wine develops, suspended short-chain tannins and acids start to combine, forming longer chains, reducing the surface area of the tannins, making them taste less astringent; as a result, the wine becomes rounder and softer.  These reactions are slow oxidation reactions. At a certain point, the heavier long-chain tannins start to drop out of the wine in the form of sediment that accumulates at the bottom of the bottle. Depending on the wine and how long it’s been ageing, the deposit may stick to the glass, but often it is fine, silty, and easily disturbed – clouding the wine and making it bitter if stirred up. It may take anywhere from half an hour to a day or so for this sediment to resettle once disturbed. Wines are always properly stored on their side, label up, so that, when decanting, you know exactly where the deposit is if a deposit has formed. 

For that reason, if you’re taking an aged wine to a restaurant, it’s important to handle it as gingerly as possible on the way (ideally you’d take it the day before you plan to dine to let any sediment settle again before it’s decanted) and likewise to see that it’s handled very gingerly during the decanting process. 

At any serious restaurant, it should be possible to walk in with an old bottle (held sideways, label up – a wine that’s been coddled on the way over in the car, agitated as little as possible) and ask for it to be decanted. That request, as a matter of course, should produce a decanter (naturally – although I’ve been surprised by restaurants with pretensions to fine dining that don’t own a decanter), a decanting basket (which holds the wine still on its side but with the neck slightly elevated to facilitate removal of the cork), and a light source. 

Traditionally, the light source is a candle, but I have to admit that a small flashlight makes the job much easier. The light – whatever used – placed below the neck of the bottle allows you to see the sediment through the wine as it‘s poured from the bottle into the decanter, the bottle having been picked up carefully from the decanting basket and held sideways as the wine is poured out. The trick is to look through the wine as you pour, keeping an eye on the sediment as the wine passes over it into the decanter. Done properly, nearly all of the clear wine makes it into the decanter, most of the sediment remains in the original bottle. 

Once transferred, the decanter can be handled with no further fuss.  You can turn the decanter on its side as you fill glasses, set it upright again, and then pour more wine – each glass as clear and free of sediment as the next. The goal here has been to separate clear wine from the sediment in an old wine. 

If you’re still with me, there’s one further, very important point to make: old wine does not need to breathe. Very old wine can lose its vibrancy remarkably quickly after it’s been opened and decanted. Further exposure to air starts to risk rapid oxidation of a wine that’s already had the benefit of many years of slow, controlled, in-bottle oxidation. Old wine that’s just been decanted should be enjoyed immediately. 

So, imagine my disappointment at our recent family celebration, when our waitress – having been informed that we brought an old bottle that would need to be decanted – fetched a decanter, said something about letting the wine breathe (!) grasped the bottle by the neck, turned it sharply upright, whipped out her wine opener, and proceeded as if opening a cheap Chardonnay bottled last year, twisting the bottle rather than the corkscrew, and then pouring the wine unceremoniously into the decanter – along with all the sediment it contained. 

Despite my disappointment, I said nothing. The damage was done. The wine wasn’t completely ruined, but, needless to say, it would have been better if it had been decanted properly. 

The food was good. We will eat at this restaurant again. It’s a restaurant I enjoy, and because I like it, I won’t name it. That said, the next time we go, if a mature wine is involved, I’ll decant it at home, rinse out the bottle, return the wine to its original container, pop the cork back in and take it, ready to go, with no on-site decantation required. And maybe I’ll send a copy of this little essay to the management and suggest their servers could use a little training in why we decant wine (young and old) and how to go about it. I’m acutely aware that many people in the world have far more urgent and critical things to worry about. I feel deeply privileged just to live in a place where no one is lobbing artillery shells at me, but, if I’m going to drink old wine, I’d like to do it right.