Welcome everyone to our October 2019 Customer Take Over series! Our first submission for the series comes in the form of a request from our customer Bob Dunehoo:
“Cam – For those of us older consumers of your efforts to educate us about, and provide us with, great wine at reasonable prices, I would invite your bloggers to share their decanting techniques, especially with regard to the 14 1/2% wines. Thanks, Bob”
Well Bob, we can immediately remove any concern about how to decant based on alcohol levels as it is the same for an 11% wine as it is for a 16.5% wine. The objective is to allow oxygen to interact with the juice, alcohol percentage will not affect the amount of oxygen interacting with the wine.
As for techniques, check out Cam’s video here.
To grossly summarize, time is the best method. Using aerators like the Vinturi can assist in the process, but make negligible improvements in comparison to having just let the wine sit in a glass or glass decanter for a period of time. The blender is actually a surprisingly effective method if you’re in a rush, but you do run the risk of shocking the wine a bit and disjointing the tannins.
So we end this take over article with the ultimate answer to the initial request:
Best decanting technique is time (20 minutes to around 2 hours), and patience.
Beyond that, you can have all sorts of fun with what kind of decanter you want to purchase. There are basic industrial glass decanters in the $20+ range out there, or you can go all out with the $1000+ crystal decanters that function secondarily (or possibly primarily) as a piece of fine art.