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When do you decant wine?
Basically, decanting means adding more oxygen to a wine by transferring it from the bottle to another vessel (a special carafe). The oxygen breaks down the aromas of the wine: The more air the wine gets, the more intense and complex its aroma becomes and the fuller, more complex and rounder its taste becomes. In this context, however, a distinction must be made between caraffing and decanting.
If it is only a matter of "aerating" the wine, we speak of decanting. Firstly, the wine comes into contact with oxygen during decanting, and secondly, it has a larger surface area in the decanter on which the oxygen can settle. The carafes that serve this purpose are very wide at the bottom and taper sharply towards the top; their appearance is somewhat reminiscent of ice sticks (the sports equipment). Strong, young red wines and white wines with a lot of extract, a lot of minerality and/or a lot of tannin are caraffed to make them more accessible through the influence of oxygen. As a rule, the wine in question is caraffed a few hours before drinking, sometimes even up to 24 hours can be useful. Tasting the wine again and again during the aeration period to witness its changes is a fascinating pleasure.
In contrast to mere decanting, decanting in the narrower sense mainly serves to separate an old red wine from the deposit that has formed in the bottle in the course of maturation. This is (harmless, but unpleasantly bitter-tasting) lees that settle over the years - a completely natural process. When decanting, the wine is also transferred from the bottle into a decanter, but the neck of the bottle is held over a light source (usually a candle) to be able to see immediately when the deposit appears. This then remains in the bottle with a small amount of wine. Since matured wines are more fragile, i.e. they change more quickly in the air and may degenerate rapidly, there are special decanters for this purpose that are shaped differently and offer a smaller liquid surface. For particularly old, valuable wines, decanting should be avoided in case of doubt so as not to run the risk of them collapsing very quickly due to too much contact with air.
Occasionally, caraffing or decanting can also have aesthetic reasons: If, in a very damp cellar, the label or cork has become unsightly over time or the bottle has taken on a musty smell, the wine can be decanted into a decanter so as not to impair the enjoyment experience visually or olfactorically.
Cleaning decanters
Cleaning wine decanters is not easy due to their special shape. There are a number of tricks to effectively remove deposits:
- Bit cleaner tablets reliably dissolve soiling, are tasteless and leave no residue. However, milky residues may occur on sensitive crystal glass carafes.
- Contamination can also be removed by dissolving baking soda in a little water and leaving it in the carafe for a day.
- Another possibility is to mix coarse sea salt and white wine vinegar and swirl them in the carafe by shaking.
In any case, it is essential to rinse the carafe very thoroughly with clear water after the cleaning treatment.
Turbo aeration
To add oxygen to a wine, there are also special decanting pourers(Venturi tube) that are simply placed on the bottle and enrich the wine with air while pouring. This can be a time-saving alternative to decanting when a wine in need of aeration needs to be available quickly.