Your wine has been locked up firmly and kept away from oxygen and other outside influences for quite some time. All that deliciousness locked in a bottle simply yearns to be poured in your glass.
When it is finally freed from its cage this angry young wine is ready to give you a firm slap in your face leaving you somewhat haggard with a taut tannin mouth and a sudden need for fruit. But not to worry its first gasp of fresh air will help this young, full-bodied rough red wine diamond to soften up and bring out its fruity aromas.
Simply opening a bottle an hour in advance won’t do the trick, because the neck of the bottle is too narrow to let much oxygen through. Decanting wine however is a great way of exposing wine to oxygen. This can be done by gently letting the wine run along the wall of your glass decanter, or in a more "brutal" way, by quickly pouring the wine into the decanter. This actually gives you control over the degree of aeration. It's also a great idea to let the wine rest for an hour after decanting before pouring it out. This will give the wine some extra air.
If a wine does have a lot of tannins, such as a young, complex Bordeaux, you can even decide to double decant - you pour the wine into a decanter and then back into the bottle. However, only decant if this really helps! With simple white wines for instance, there is a good chance that part of the fruit aromas will be lost.
Try it yourself. And if you don't want to decant the whole bottle we even have a very sweet mini decanter in two sizes.
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