Mythbusters: Decanting Isn't Just for Fancy Wine

Ep 161

Think decanting is only for expensive red wine? You might be missing out on getting more from wines you already own.

Most wine drinkers associate decanters with fancy restaurants, aged Bordeaux, and special occasions. But the reality is that decanting can benefit everything from an older red to certain white wines and even an affordable bottle from the grocery store. In this episode, we dive into where the decanting myth came from and what decanting actually does to your wine.

You'll learn the two main reasons for decanting, the science behind evaporation and oxidation, how sediment forms in both red and white wines, and how long different styles of wine should spend in a decanter. You'll also discover when decanting can improve a wine and when it's better to skip it altogether.

So if you've ever wondered whether decanting is worth the effort or just another wine ritual, this episode will help you decide when it can genuinely improve what's in your glass.

Episode Highlights:

• Why the decanting myth exists
• The two main purposes of decanting
• Sediment in red and white wines
• Why some wines smell like sulfur or matchsticks when first opened 
• Evaporation vs. oxidation explained
• When cheap wines benefit from decanting
• How long to decant different wine styles
• Wines that should not be decanted

Transcript

0:09

Interested in learning about wine but not sure where to start? You're in the right place. Welcome to the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine Podcast. I'm your host, Hayley Bowlman, and I'm so glad you're here. I'm a wine enthusiast turned wine educator and founder of the Seattle based wine tasting business, Cork and Fizzling. It is my goal to build your confidence in wine by making it approachable and lots of fun. You can expect to learn everything from how to describe your favorite wine to what to pair with dinner tonight, and so much more. Whether you're a casual wine sipper or a total court dork like myself, this podcast is for you. So grab yourself a glass and let's dive in foreign. Welcome back to the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine Podcast. Now, if you're a regular listener, you've been getting an episode every week, so this doesn't probably feel that different for you, but this is my first solo episode that I'm recording post partum post having a baby. So if I sound a little rusty, please give me a break. Though it's only been a week in between episodes for you, it's been about five, six months in between episodes for me. I'm actually coming back into it by recording the last episode of my mythbusters miniseries that hopefully you've been enjoying, where I debunk wine myths new and old and give you the straight facts. And of course, a couple opinions of my own because this is my podcast. After all, today's myth decanting is only for fancy red wine. The truth is you can decant low cost wines and you can even decant some white wines. So let's dive into it. So first, the myth. Where does this come from, this idea that you can only decant and again, decanting. And we'll go into what decanting is exactly in a little bit, but just to make sure that we both have the same idea in mind. Decanting is when you are pouring the wine in the bottle into another container in order to get it to open up or to separate it from the sediment that it has gathered, I suppose. So this idea that you can only decant. And the thing is like when you think of a decanter, most time in my mind I'm picturing like something that kind of looks like a pitcher, but it doesn't always have like a pour spout and it's just this like nice glass carafe. In such a way though, decanters can get super, super fancy. I feel like this is where, like, glass. Those that are. What are they called? The glass sculptors, Glass makers. I don't know. Words are hard. Uh, and I'm doing a podcast. While it's a great place to be. They can look crazy. They've got all the swirls and all of this, and it's like, how do you even clean that? And I don't know, you don't need to get a fancy decanter. You can just get a plain decanter or even just use a pitcher. Anyway, we went down a little bit of a tangent, but just so you know, that's what we're talking about when we're talking decanting. You can also decant into a wine glass. It doesn't have to be a full. Like, you don't have to pour the entire bottle. You can decant a glass of wine as well. So let's talk about the. The myth. So decanting is only for fancy red wine. I think this myth stems from two things. One, it's a lack of understanding of what the goal of decanting is, which is fair. If you've never looked up or done a Google search of what does decanting do to wine, why would you know that? So that's what I'm here for. I'm gonna tell you what it's for. And then also, I think the myth comes from the association of decanting with fancy wine things, right? Like, I think most people don't think of decanting as something they would do with, like, an everyday wine or just that's part of their everyday life. Like, instead, the only time you'd see it is if you went to a fancy dinner and a sommelier serving you wine, brought out this crazy glass, you know, craft with all these swirls and this, and started pouring wine into it, and you went, whoa. And it was like, felt like a once in a lifetime experience. That might be the fancy crazy decanter, but a regular decanter can be part of your everyday wine drinking life. So let's now dig into the facts on what is decanting. How does it work? Why does it work beyond just the fancy red wines? So there are two main goals when you're decanting, and it's generally an either or situation. It's not like, oh, we're trying to achieve both of these goals. It's, you are trying to achieve goal one, or you're trying to achieve goal two. This will make sense when I tell you what the two goals are. The first goal is getting the sediment that's at the bottom of the bottle. Well, more like separating the wine from the sediment that's at the bottom of the bottle. Goal number two is to give the wine a chance to breathe. So, again, these are two different goals. We'll start with the first one. Just a quick reminder. If you are not on my mailing list yet, what are you waiting for? I would love for you to join. When you do, you'll get a free shopping guide that has 15 of my favorite wines under$15. Head to corkandfizz.com, scroll down to the bottom, and there'll be a little section where you can join the mailing list. I send out a weekly newsletter filled with wine tips, recommendations, spread special offers, and so much more. Now, let's get back to the show. First, if there is any sediment at the bottom of the bottle, decanting separates the delectable liquid, AKA our wine, from this bitter sediment. The sediment is completely natural. It's unharmful. You could drink it if you wanted to. It's just kind of unpleasant to taste, and so that's why you're going to decant it in reds. This sediment is usually developed from tannins in the wine. What happens is they form chains and then those become. Those chains become so long that they actually fall out of suspension, forming this sediment. And there's nothing worse than enjoying a sip of aged wine and then suddenly getting a mouthful of these bitter tannins. Because whether they're in the wine or they've fallen out as sediment, they are going to cause your mouth to feel super, super dry, and you do not want a concentrated amount of that feeling. The thing is, sediment can also occur in white wines. In this case, it's usually from tartrate crystals or lees. These tartrate crystals, these will form when tartaric acid in the grape binds with potassium and becomes unstable, especially if the wine gets very cold. Tartrate crystals are also called wine diamonds. And so again, if you see these, sometimes they show up on the cork, but if you also just see them in the wine, they are totally safe. But as a wine gets older, you develop more of these. And these are concentrated acids, so you might not want to drink them. And then also the lees, these are leftover proteins or yeast. When yeast dies, it becomes lees. L, E E s. Might sound like I'm saying leaves on a tree. No, lees, L, E E s, those are dead yeast cells. Again, totally safe to drink. But if you have a large concentration of Them, you may not want to take a big sip of them. And there can be other phenolic compounds beyond tannins that can show up in your white wine. They fall out of suspension as the wine ages. So you get sediment. And so our first goal with decanting is to separate the wine from the sediment. And this can happen with an old red. This can happen with an old white wine. It can happen with both, most commonly with reds, but you will see it with whites as well. So we're already debunking the myth that you can only do it with fancy reds. You can do it with whites as well. Okay. The second goal of decanting is to give the wine a chance to breathe. Simply put, the wine has been trapped inside a bottle with little to no oxygen and just needs a second to, like, relax and open up. Otherwise it's just going to taste overly sharp or acidic, or you might not get as many flavors as you would if you gave it a chance to breathe. Now, if we want to get more technical, there are two processes going on. When I say breathe, right. It's not just like actually the wine taking a breath. There is science behind this, I promise. So when you decant your wine to let it breathe, evaporation and oxidation are happening. We're going to dive a little deeper into both of those. So first, evaporation is all about getting rid of the bad stuff. Evaporation happens almost immediately once you open and pour the bottle of wine into a separate vessel. During this evaporation process, alcohol is rapidly released along with certain aromatic compounds. I kind of picture it like alcohol are these little, like, bubbles that are coming off the wine. There aren't actually bubbles. Right. So we are imagining this. These are imaginary, these little imaginary bubbles. And the aroma compounds are kind of coming off with them. They're like riding the bubbles. I don't know if that makes sense. It's a very, very strange visual. But these aroma compounds, don't worry, they're not the good ones. These are the bad ones of things we don't want to smell a lot of in our wine. And a lot of them are specifically sulfur related compounds. Because when wine is bottled, winemakers often use a small amount of sulfur dioxide to keep the wine from going bad before it gets to you, the consumer. Nothing wrong with this practice. Don't let anybody tell you sulfites are bad. Sulfur dioxide, don't use it. Blah, blah, blah. Most winemakers use it. It's totally safe. It's totally fine. It's used almost universally however, it can cause a wine to smell reductive when it's first opened. If you ever heard somebody describe a wine as reductive, what they're talking about are aromas like rotten egg, matchstick, or even canned vegetables. These sound awful, right? You don't want your wine to smell like these things. A lot of times it's temporary. It's that sulfur, the sulfur dioxide coming off the wine. And your wine just needs a second to breathe and evaporate off a little bit of alcohol and those sulfur related aromas. So when you decant your wine, those aromas will evaporate off, leaving you with all the good aromas to enjoy. And again, I promised you this was science. So I got a study to back this up. I didn't do the study. I'm going to tell you about a study that somebody else did. There was a 2016 study by the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry. They found that wine left in an open glass container lost 1% alcohol by volume in just two hours. So again, there is alcohol evaporating off your wine when you just open it up, put it in contact with the air and, you know, let it do its thing. And it lost 3.2% over six hours. This loss of alcohol often makes the wine taste smoother. Plus, they found the wine contained fewer volatile compounds, the ones that would make your wine smell like grotonnaise, remember, after it had been sitting out. So it's, it's just science. That's what happens when you let wine sit out after you open it. So just thinking about this evaporation process tells us that your

10: 11:18

15 bottle of Trader Joe's Cabernet Sauvignon could benefit from decanting. It was likely bottled with sulfur dioxide. And also, who doesn't want a slightly smoother wine, right? If that wine's like 14% alcohol bottled with some sulfur dioxide, putting in a decanter for some amount of time will help bring off any of those bad aromas and make it a little smoother. All right? Now, if your goal is simply to evaporate the bad stuff, right? If we're just trying to get off the sulfur dioxide, we're trying to let a little bit of the alcohol come off and have it just be a little smoother. You simply need to do what I've heard referred to as a quick decant. And this is basically where you take a bottle and you just quickly dump it like you full on, you know, flip it upside down over a decanter and let the wine just Come very quickly out. You're not doing it carefully. You're not going gentle. The first time I actually heard about doing this, there's a wine shop here in Seattle called University Wines, and the owner there does a tasting every weekend. I think he's not the owner anymore, but I'm sure they keep up with it. The new owners do. And we'd had a white Burgundy, this Chardonnay from Burgundy France, from there. And this wine shop is famous for their Burgundy and their French wines, so they know what they're doing. Anyway, we had this delicious white Burgundy that we tasted when we were then really called. We're definitely taking. Getting a bottle and taking it home. And he told us, okay, when you want to enjoy this wine, make sure that you dump it in a decanter first. And I thought that was absolutely wild. But he was serving it from a decanter, and he was just like, just trust me. The wine's going to be a little reductive. When you open it, it's going to have a little bit of these off, like, smoky, kind of matchstick smell. You're going to just dump it into a decanter. You don't need to have it sit in there very long, maybe 20, 30 minutes if you want. That's the oxidation thing. We'll tell you about that in a second. That's the second part of the process. But the dumping part, that was for evaporation. That was to kind of get a little bit of the bad stuff out. And that was to let some of that, you know, the volatile aromas off of the wine. And we did it, and it tasted great. So highly recommend. You can do this with a white wine. You, of course, can do it with a fancy red. You can also do it with a low cost, you know, $10 bottle from the grocery store red. Just do a quick decant and see what happens to the wine. See if it gets a little smoother. Now, if evaporation is about getting rid of the bad stuff, oxidation is about developing the good stuff. Wait. I know you think this is mad, but it's not, so don't hit Skip. I have a small favor to ask. Here's the truth. I will never charge you to listen to this show, but every episode takes time and money to create. So if this podcast has helped you pick a better bottle, learn something new, or just kept you company, would you consider becoming a paid subscriber? You can show your Support for just $3, $5, $8, or $10 a month to say thanks every single Supporter gets a shout out on the next episode I record. And if you choose the $10 tier, you actually get to pick a future episode topic. Setting up a subscription is a great way to show your love for the show. Just click the link in the description right now. Thank you for listening, supporting and being part of my wine loving community. Now let's get back to the show. While evaporation happens almost immediately though, again, it does take time, right? That study found that it was over an hour. You lost the alcohol. You don't actually want like to lose that much alcohol off your wine, but you want, you want a little bit. Oxidation takes even more time than evaporation does. And this is because oxidation transforms the compounds found in the wine into new aromas and flavors, rather than just moving the compounds around as evaporation does. Oxidation works by introducing the chemical compounds in wine to any gases. Any gases. It's called oxygen oxidation. Yeah, it introduces them to oxygen, which in turn causes chemical reactions. Different wines react to oxygen in different ways. It all depends on what compounds are found in the wine. In order to get the full effects of oxidation, most wines need at least a couple hours and some could even take days due to the antioxidant compounds in the wine that prevent the oxidation process from happening. Generally, this oxidation process, where it transforms the flavors in a positive way, does require a higher quality wine. We need a wine that has a bit of complexity and something that has that ability to transform. So this is probably one of those where the myth is a little bit more based on though. Again, you could do this with a white wine, with a good quality white wine as well, doesn't have to be a red wine. Now here are a couple quick tips. Now that you understand what decanting is and what it does, here are some quick tips on how to and how long to decant your wines. Now if you have an older wine, this is where we're going to be doing it. To separate the sediment, you'll want to pour the wine gently into a separate container, AKA a decanter, right up until you start to see sediment in the neck of the bottle. If you want to feel super fancy doing this, use a like the flashlight from your phone or a candle. Put it underneath where like the neck of the bottle is when you're pouring the wine into the decanter. And it'll help you see the sediment in the neck of the bottle. Obviously take the sticker off too, if there's a sticker over the neck of the bottle. But then you can kind of like watch. And as long as it's liquid, you can keep warm. But as soon as you start to see sediment, you stop. And by doing that, you prevent yourself from having to drink any of the sediment. You might lose a little bit of the wine, but trust me, it's worth it. You don't want any of that sediment. You let the wine sit for a minute or two to allow the evaporation process to pull off any of that, you know, the sulfur dioxide, those off putting aromas. But don't let this old wine sit too long. Older wines can quickly lose their pleasant aromas if they're left in contact with oxygen for too long. They've kind of already done the oxidation process just over a really long period of time while they were aging. So for younger wines, you want to do that quick decant. With most red wines and mini whites, right? You want to just kind of like dump them into a decanter. Essentially you are not looking for anything, you are not being careful. You are just put it all in there. If you think your wine is high enough quality to develop new flavors, then you can follow the guidelines of how long to let it sit in the decanter. If you're just looking to have it the off putting aroma pulled off, I would stick to just having it in the decanter. No longer than like 20 minutes. But like I said, if you think there's some new flavors that can develop, you could follow these guidelines. So for full bodied or high tannic red wines, think like Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Malbec, Nebbiological, one to two hours or even more. The cool thing about decanting too is that you can keep tasting it as it goes and kind of tell, you know, when is enough. Now medium bodied or medium tannic reds, kind of like Merlot, Sangiovese, Tempranillo, 30-60 min, light bodied or low tannic red wines, think Pinot Noir, Gamay, Those only need 20 to 30 minutes. Orange wines can also benefit from a little bit of decanting about 20 to 30 minutes. And then your medium or full bodied white wines, about 10, 20 minutes. I remember with that white Burgundy, I wanna say he said 20 to 30 minutes. So it could go a little longer depending on the wine. And then just in general, again, you can kind of keep tasting the wine as you're decanting it. If the wine tastes grippy, AKA it like pulls all the saliva out of your mouth, like it just makes your mouth feel dry, like you had cotton balls in it or it feels sharp and spicy or hot. That's like the alcohol. The wine could probably benefit from some more decanting. Also, if it smells a bit like sulfur, like rotten egg matchstick, like canned vegetables, it could probably benefit from decanting. And I'm sure you're wondering, okay, so when shouldn't I decant a wine? In general, any wines that are fairly light and delicate, especially light white wines or sparkling wines, are typically not decanted. And like I said, the older wines you decanted to pull it off the sediment but not to open it up, you are ready to drink that right away for the most part. If you're familiar with decanting, you may also know or have heard of an aerator. An aerator is a small device that wine can be poured through before being poured into a glass or a decanter. It either sits on top of a glass of wine or is fitted into an open bottle of wine. And the aerator, what it's supposedly supposed to do is it rapidly introduces the wine to oxygen, supposedly quickening the process of oxidation to nearly instantaneous. I've heard mixed reviews on aerators from wine professionals. Honestly, I don't really use one. I stick with a decanter if I want my wine in contact with oxygen. And for older wines, you need to use a decanter. An aerator is not the way to go. Right. We need to separate the sediment. We don't want an aerator that's going to ruin our very delicate wine. Okay, well, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine Podcast and learned something new. If you loved it as much as I did, I'd love it. If you take a quick second rate it, leave a review and if you know a wine lover in your life that would enjoy this, please share it with them. And if you'd like to show additional support for the show, you can become a paid subscriber, click the link in the show notes and become a monthly supporter. For $10 or less a month, you'll get a shout out in the next episode I record. Plus, if you choose $10 per month, you'll get to choose a topic for a future podcast episode. In next week's episode, I'll be introducing you to Mia Martinson. She's a sommelier with a very impressive history and a really cool story. She's originally from the Swedish island of Gotland, and she started her journey washing dishes at just 14 years old before climbing the ranks of the world's most prestigious restaurants. Her career has taken her from sommelier roles at Michelin starred landmarks in Stockholm to a nine year stint in South Africa's wine country. She even spent six years sailing the globe as head sommelier on the luxury yacht the World, sourcing incredible vintages from every corner of the map. She also has a very cool story about her experience on the world, so you're going to want to listen in for that today. She's the creative force behind the award winning wine and beverage program at Seven Stars Resort in Turks and Caicos. She literally took a place that had like the Every place in Turks and Caicos had the same, you know, 10 wines on the list, totally transformed it and has created just an amazing wine list and amazing experiences at this resort. So if you already wanted to go to it, or if you didn't know that you wanted to go to a resort in Turks and Caicos, I have a feeling after listening to this, you're going to want to go to a resort in Turks and Caico. Thanks again for listening. And if you want to learn more about wine, come follow me at corkandfizz on Instagram. Cheers.