Sometimes Anna, my friends, or I unexpectedly get in the mood to open a bottle and I’m faced with this conundrum…
The bottle I REALLY want to open will be at it’s best with a few hours air, but we’re going to drink it as soon as it’s opened.
What do you do in these situations?
A) Do you keep a separate Pop and Pour selection of wines you can choose from?
B) Do you open the wine you really want, knowing it’ll all be gone before it really shows you it’s full quality?
C) Do you open a Pop and Pour AND the wine you really want, hoping you make it to the second bottle in a couple hours?
D) Something else
I’m curious. For me, it depends on my mood, and the company. I do all of the above.
I usually will do option C in this kind of situation and decant the real bottle into the biggest container I have to increase surface area. Then anxiously start praying as we start drinking the pnp bottle.
lol… so far, no one has chosen to simply NOT have the wine they really want.
Jerome, I can relate to your approach! When I we are drinking bottle #1 too fast I am hoping everyone slows down. lol. Or I throw ANOTHER sacrificial PnP infantry bottle into battle to buy my royal guard more time to be ready.
Generally we don’t sweat it too much, though we drink slow enough for the wine to have a chance to open out.
However if a wine is to be opened because you’re thirsty / likely for the bottle to be drained quickly, then I’d lean towards a bottle of fizz, with something else lined up to follow that can have time to breathe / come up to temperature.
Well, I have had that bite me in the arse too. For example, last week a couple friends are in our neighborhood and drop by, and just then two of our neighbors join us. So, 6 of us. In anticipation of drinking more than 1 bottle I open a Bdx to breathe while we start with a bottle of white. Then a couple people ask for rose. That’s opened too (yours, by the way Larry – roundly enjoyed by all for not being sweet!). Then a neighbor wants to grab an already open bottle of chard from her fridge to add to the fray.
But with 3 bottles out already, we never make it to the Bdx (except me since I am committed at this point. lol.)
I mean, it’s not a big deal either way, but I just wondered how each different berserker approaches it.
Additional question, if I may: in the given situation, if the bottle you really want to open is of a certain age, lying vertically, and you know it will probably have a fair bit of temperamental sediment, will this have an impact on your decision? Do you A) remove it extremely carefully, cradle it to remove the cork, gently decant, and hope for the best, or B) PnP the '10 CdP instead?
There are also those times when you decide to open a bottle, then realize that it’s going to need more time than I anticipated to open up. This seems to happen way too often. So then you open that back up bottle that you don’t mind people throwing back (usually a $15-20 CdR, Mourvedre, or Garnacha)
I never worry about it, ever. If I’m always wondering about the right amount of airing, the right time to drink, and all that stuff, I would never end up enjoying the wine. If I think about it ahead of time and know from experience that a wine is helped by air, then if I don’t get distracted by something, I’ll open and decant in advance, but it’s not something I ever give much thought to.
As Larry says, at the end of the day, just enjoy it.
P&P the bottle you want. Letting wine air does NOT make it better and sometimes make it worse. 5 minutes in a glass is all any wine needs. I refer you to this thread.
I will go ahead and open it, decant, wait as long as I can, and hope for the best. I try to plan ahead but sometimes things get out of hand and we open more without much thought as to its readiness.
If when we taste it, it really is not drinking well, I will open something else and keep the other bottle for the next day. Either way, I win.
Seriously though, I keep PnP bottles aside for situations such as the one you describe. Not worth chancing it, particularly not if it’s likely to be drunk quickly. I’ve also been caught out as the idiot who opens a bottle, just to tell everyone that it needs time to air, then leave it until everyone leaves.