Wine makers typically recommend you let your red wine breathe some time before drinking. It gives the wine time to “open up” as they say to get you the best flavor possible. A traditional way to do that is to open the bottle, pour it into a decanter and wait. Decanters, because of their shape, allow the wine more contact with the air than they would if you left the wine in an open bottle.
Here’s the problem. Winemakers often recommend you leave the wine decanted several hours. I don’t know about you, but that puts a real damper on my wine drinking habits. Are you really going to open wines, decant them and then wait several hours before you start pouring? I don’t think so.
Now there are tons of gadgets and tools made for aerating wine. The goal here is to shortcut the process. Some are super simple filters you pour the wine through as you get it into your glass. I’ve used a number of these and haven’t found any that are super great.
I was at a California tasting room with friends on a recent trip and made an interesting discovery. The winemakers wanted to give the tasting room visitors that absolute best experience possible and that means decanting the wine they served for over four hours. Knowing that just wasn’t practical, they recommended this decanter / carafe you can see demonstrated in the video below. It enables you to get four hours of decanting done in under a minute.
You pour the wine into it and then back into a bottle. You’re done in less than 60 seconds.
[video_page_section type=”vimeo” position=”default” btn=”light” heading=”” subheading=”” image=”https://casualwiners.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/decanter-carafe.png” cta=”” video_width=”1080″ ]https://vimeo.com/387289437[/video_page_section]
Let me know what you do to decant your red wines.