This would have gotten lost in the long thread debating slow ox, but I have a fairly specific question: if you are someone who believes in slow oxing wines - wines other than very old wines like Francois drinks, that is - how do you do it and in what situations?
Give me some guidelines you tend to use - what kinds of wines, wines of what ages, how much head space in the bottle, how long.
No need to defend your doing of it, or need for anyone else to criticize your doing it (in this thread at least - bring those arguments to the other thread instead), but just explain how you approach it.
I’m curious to know what is really meant by slow ox, and as someone with an open mind on the topic, I’m also considering conducting a small blind tasting experiment. But if I’m going to do an experiment, I want it to fall generally within the range of what people actually do - I don’t want to go to the trouble and expense just to have it dismissed as “yeah but that’s not how people do it.”
Chris, I do it with both “older” Bordeaux and “older” California Cabernets. But my definition of “older” is different for these two categories.
For red Bordeaux, I do it for wines from the 1960s and earlier. What I do is stand the bottle up a couple of days in advance, then the day of service I will open the bottle 4-5 hours ahead of time, making sure to not jostle it. Then when I serve, I do it as gently as possible so as to not disturb the sediment layer. I then stop serving when there’s about 1/2 glass left to leave the sediment in the bottle.
For California Cabernets, I do it for wines from the mid-1980s and earlier. Same process as for Bordeaux.
For Sauternes, I will slow ox for wines from the 1960s and earlier. But if there is sediment, I will typically decant the wine right before service because I find the tartar crystals in the bottle are lighter than the sediment in the red wines and hard to keep on the bottom during service.
Chris, I hope you do end up conducting the blind tasting experiment. Some of my favorite threads from a few years ago were about experimenting to test travel shock, and you inspired me to do the “ship wines to a friend and back” test. I’m not a “slow-oxer” but am not so convinced of its futility that I’d be shocked to read that it makes a difference.
Jay, did you write about the travel shock and I missed it? I’d love to see that.
I do want to try the test, but I’d need a number of people to give me some parameters. For example, does anyone take a 2000s Burg or Barolo, maybe pour out a couple ounces, then leave the bottle to slow breathe for the day or for several hours, anything like that?
I slow-ox all my older wines and some of the younger ones as well. I believe that it’s important to treat different wines according to their own idiosyncratic characteristics. Some young wines I decant (cabernet blends, malbec, and other generally sturdy wines), some I pop and pour (CdP and other more temperamental reds), and some I slow-ox. Of the latter I tend to open and leave most non-ordinary (basically good quality) white wines, as well as SGMs and a few others, for ca. 4-6 hours before drinking. I’ve found that it tends to harmonise them and allows any volatile aromas that are close to the surface to dissipate. In a few blind tastings I’ve done with the same wines, it worked better for a lot of whites, compared with P&P and decanting.
Would be fun to see the results of this experiment.
I suspect the most common approach is to pour out an ounce or so to taste initially, then let the bottle sit. Some probably just pull the cork, nothing more.
If you’ll allow me to make a suggestion on a trial: take 3 bottles of the same wine. Slow-ox one, decant one for an hour or two then back into its bottle for pouring, pop one just before tasting. One person does that work and label the bottles A/B/C. Leave the bottles in another room, have a second person come in, label the bottles again 1/2/3 (which is how you label the glasses). Taste and evaluate wines, rate the bottles, then reveal which is A, B, and C.
I think I wrote up the results somewhere but am having a hard time searching my own posts. The upshot is that we did 6 bottles of the same wine, 3 shipped to a friend and back and 3 kept home. A group of blind tasters were asked to rank the wines and also guess which were the travelers. The results were completely random.
I think for slow-ox to be effective, that a first glass must be poured out of the bottle until the surface of the wine is below the shoulder to increase the surface area. Of course, this also gives an opportunity to sample the glass over time to determine when the wine in the bottle is ready.
I don’t think I can be friends with someone even more cynical than I
But to your point, Chris would need to do this a couple dozen times to build up some meaningful statistics, one way or the other. I like his plan, though.
I don’t claim that anything I do will be definitive, but it would be an interesting data point. I really need to hear from more practitioners of slow ox though - types of non-old wines, how much to pour off, how long to aerate.
I absolutely LOVE that Jay T did the travel shock experiment. That’s a superstition that needs to die.
(I know it is hard to shut up if one has nothing productive to say, but one could try at least …)
Well, at home it is not always possible, but for official tastings I usually do it like this - also for young wines:
open the bottles app. 5 h in advance, pour a glass, taste (for cork, but also for other issues and the overall condition), refill the rest and take the bottles - standing in a box - to the tasting.
App. 15-20 min. before serving I decant each flight …
It´s not only (or mainly) about bringing oxygen INTO the wine, but also to give the chance to bring OUT off-smells (reduction, SO2 etc.).
My purely pragmatic experience:
this way the wines show definitely better than right after opening
they can stand decanting better (no or less dryness of the tannins, less sharp acidity etc.)
they open further up in the glass more quickly …
Solely positive experiences - at least if it doesn´t help it won´t do any harm …
(but I´m convinced it is usually better than pop and pour, as well as immediate decanting …)
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