Double decant question

Could you decant a young cab for several hours then rebottle and cork and open again say 48 hours later ?

Would this be similar to a normal decant ? Or would aging continue when recorked ?

Reason for ask8ng is to transport the wine safely to an offsite

I would say that oxygen in the bottle would continue the opening of the wine some, but not to a great extent .

Just on a whim, you exposed it to open oxygen, and that’s where it all changed. Wine is always aging, it just sped up there when you released the cork.

If you re-bottled and used maybe a nitrogen filler or something, maybe it slows it down again, maybe. However you are talking about 48 hours for that, its a guessing game.

Curious question I have is why not decant and just allow for transportation time.

Many on here do this often.

Not sure what corking for 48 does unless on a flight for 48 hours. (being facetious there)

I think you’ll still have a tasty wine, particularly if you leave little ullage. However, I typically just decant for an hour or two then pour back into the bottle the day or evening I’m going to consume it.

a young cab throws no sediment and that’s the main reason for a double decant—to get the wine off its sediment. Why would you want to decant 2 days in advance?

I have no solid evidence to cite, but I’m a believer that wine continues to develop and open after you you have double decanted and poured it back in the bottle.

I’m not sure why it would be necessary but I would have no concerns about it damaging a young wine.

I often double-decant older wines in the morning before work and take them to an offline after. I don’t think they suffer, and I believe it’s quite different than leaving the wine in a decanter with a large surface exposed.

The other Alan was talking about decanting it for several hours, then pouring it back in the bottle. Presumably to open it up. That’s somewhat different from simply decanting and then pouring right back into a bottle.

I think you may be confusing aging with doing something to open up a young wine.

As others have said, double decanting is usually something done with older wines to get rid of sediment before they’re shaken up in transit. Sediment won’t be an issue with your wine.

If you simply want to give the wine some air/oxygen to open it up, I think you would probably be fine just decanting on arrival.

That’s an important point John brings up. I kinda jumped to your immediate need, you are not hurting the wine. He brings in the thoughtful point of what a double decant really is. And a good point.

Sorry if im using words incorrectly, never done that before !!

Im opening a big 16 cab that i know will take some time to open up to be drinkable. Now i know a lot of people would say thats a bad idea but i love young wines and i have multiple bottles and i want to understand the wine young so i can enhance my understanding of how it develops over the next ten years as i open a bottle every few years.

The reason for for decanting early is just one of time and convenience because ill have to drink the wine fairly soon after opening so i was thinking that a few hours in a decanter then rebottling would accelerate the breathing process when i do open and pour within the hour. Just opening an hour earlier would result in way to harsh a wine.

But why a subsequent 48 hour gap Alan?

I wouldn’t worry about using ‘double decanting’ incorrectly. It’s quite silly how it’s used. I always assumed it meant actually pouring wine into a decanter twice. But most people use it to mean ‘decanting and returning it to the bottle of origin’ which doesn’t quite work logically or by syntax.

I’m not sure there is consensus on all this but I’m of the mind that if you introduce air to the wine in the manner of decanting that you given up the ghost for the most part. Your wine is certainly in a different condition than it was after it left the winery. While leaving something out in a decanter with wide surface area and no sort of seal is different than returning to the bottle I think you’ve probably introduce enough oxygen to trigger changes to your wine.

How that will effect the wine is very dependent on the wine in question. A young modern Cab will likely not see a ton of change IMO unless it’s of a cheap label. But it will change. How much is one of those things that is better found out with trial and error than polling the forum.

Give it a couple of hours in the decanter and then back in the bottle, cork it and pop it in the fridge for 48 hours, let the bottle come up to serving temperature and you are golden.
Accidentally did this the other week with a 2014 Bourgogne rouge that didn’t get touched at a dinner party and it was sublime after 2 days sitting in the fridge in a corked bottle

What do you mean? Decanting doesn’t mean moving wine into a decanter, but instead moving liquid from one container to another, typically to separate solids from the liquids. Thus, double decanting means pouring the wine twice from one vessel to another - say, back into the bottle of origin.

“Decanter” just means a fitting vessel one can perform decanting with.

Oh and re: Alan’s problem; if there’s 48 hours between popping the cork and consuming the wine, I wouldn’t worry about any extra decanting time - enough oxygen is introduced to the wine over the double decanting process.

I agree with this and suggest this would be pretty much be the same as leaving the wine in a decanter for 48 hours. If you like your new 2016 wines after a typical 48 hour decant, then this would work for you. Placing in the fridge would slow down the conversions activated by the addition of oxygen.

This is why:

Lots of tannic reds open up nicely after being open 24 - 48 hours. On CellarTracker, there are plenty of tasting notes mentioning that a young Cab was tight the first night, and delicious the second and third. Alan has probably read this several times over the years and now wants to do it himself.

I double decant a lot for later transport to BYOB restaurants. I usually do a fast double decant, meaning the wine goes back into the bottle quickly. Often I double decant in the morning and consume in the evening. What I have found is that the end result is intermediate between a full decant for whatever time and pop and pour. I actually prefer the end result with older wines, in that it seems to open the wine considerably while retaining a little more freshness. The wine then develops nicely in the glass.

I have also found, with highly structured wines, they can be much improved after a double decant and sitting in the bottle for a couple of days. Often, this has not been by design, but by accident. It surprised me initially, how long certain wines would continue to improve in a partially opened bottle.

Caveat: Much of my experience is with mature older wines that are structured for aging. For less mature wines, I have allowed them to sit in the decanter for a time before re-bottling. With a 48 hour layover, I’d probably err on the side of a short decant.

Other than Barolo and Northern Rhones needing long decants, young and old, I’ve come to think there’s no way of predicting what will work best for a given wine. I’ve had great wines popped and poured and also after four-hour decants. I’ve had others that were better when opened than after a decant; and others that were drunk without decanting and were so tight and ungiving that I was kicking myself for not using a long decant.

Count me:

If you chug it quickly enough, of course, none of this will matter.