Why, when and how do you decant a bottle of wine? This serving technique is really very quick and simple to perform, and very beneficial to the optimal enjoyment of many wines. However, it is often intimidating to many as it conjures up an image of a hoity-toity, tuxedo-clad wine steward in a fancy restaurant carefully pouring the contents of a very expensive bottle of wine into a very expensive crystal decanter over a candle.

First, a fun little factoid: Did you know that, no matter what the skin color, the juice of almost all grapes is white (to be exact, pale yellow, sometimes with green or even pink tones)? What gives red wines their color is contact with the skin and, to some extent, with the toasted oak barrels (from which darker white wines derive much of their color). Depending on the grape variety and the winemaker’s preferences, red wines are left "on the skins" after the crush for varying lengths of time during fermentation before being moved ("racked") to tanks or barrels.

As red wines age, the color particulates and tiny bits of skin which remain suspended in the finished wine eventually begin to precipitate out as a "sediment." This slowly collects as a film on the side or bottom of the bottle (depending on how it is stored). Although winemakers filter out the bigger pieces before bottling, the better ones do so as little as possible so as not to remove many of the flavor components as well. Grape skins also contain a lot of the tannins which preserves wines throughout the aging process. The tannins themselves taste harsh and bitter, and are best separated from the wine prior to drinking. Hence, the reason for decanting older wines.

There is another good reason for decanting wines, both older and younger, which is to aerate (or oxygenate) the wine prior to drinking. This greatly assists in bringing out and enhancing all of the complex flavor elements which make up a wine (most of which are perceived by us first at the olfactory level) and which are cooped up in the bottle for years. Think of it as letting the genie grow to full size out of the bottle and grant you the most pleasure from its contents.

How and when to decant? For younger wines (say less than 5 years old) where sediment has not had a chance to form, it is a simple matter of pouring the wine out into any wide-mouthed glass container (a vase, jar or laboratory beaker will do!). In this case, one is not worried about disturbing or "bruising" the wine and the object is to slosh it around to mix a lot of air into it. I usually do this right after opening the bottle and about 15-20 minutes before I plan to drink it. (Want to see what a difference this makes? Try pouring out just half the bottle into a container and swirling it around; then taste a glass from the container next to a glass from the undisturbed bottle.)

For older wines with obvious signs of sediment, one wants to be more careful. If the bottle has been stored on its side, there are two ways to handle it: stand it up for at least a day before decanting so gravity forces all the sediment to the bottom or carefully decant it from its stored position. For the latter, wine shops provide special baskets to cradle the bottle (or, if you can’t find one, use an oblong bread basket). To decant, slowly tip the bottle into a container, holding the neck over a candle. As you transfer the wine in a steady stream, watch the contents as they approach and flow through the neck. As the bottle empties, the sediment will begin to move up the side toward the neck. Allow the first inch or so of the film to flow into the decanter, but stop pouring when the film is no longer fairly transparent. If you can’t bear to leave that much wine un-drunk, a coffee filter will salvage the rest.