So, thanks to all of you, I’ve learned so much over the past year or so on this site. I’m trying older wines. While most of you wouldn’t consider a 2010 exceptionally old, it will be my oldest wine to date. I’m opening this bottle tonight. I usually use an aerator for my wine, which I don’t see discussed on the boards. I’m really confused about decanting. Should I decant this bottle, aerate, open the bottle for an hour before drinking, drink right away? I want the wine to be the best it can be.
1 Like
You could pop and pour, but the wine does better with some air. I would pour a glass and let both the bottle and the glass sit for an hour or two. It will open up more. Decanting isn’t necessary, but thirty minutes to an hour in a decanter won’t hurt it.
2 Likes
First thing is to throw away the “aerator”. There is no need to put your wines through that sort of artificial distortion field. If it does anything real, its only getting in the way of you learning how wines change with air.
A classically styled wine like Charvin from a region like CdP is likely not going to need decanting at its age. Its also not likely to be mature enough that you have to worry about catching it “in its window”. That is, at 14 years old it should drink pretty well as is for a good deal of time. Any time it needs with air is likely time you’ll have preparing dinner, etc. If you want make sure its ready at a certain time to pour four glasses for you and your guests, then it might be better to decant it an hour before serving.
My point is that you are not likely to miss anything with this wine over your decanting decision. If you are learning I would urge you to not decant if you can. Pop the wine before you want to drink the majority of it and have half a glass. Then you can see how it does or does not change when you come back to it.
Enjoy. It should be a very nice example of classic CdP.
2 Likes
This is good advice here. Opening it early and checking on it along the way is a great way to begin the process of learning.
Though keep in mind the “better” amount of air will vary widely with the type of wine and its age. If this were, say, a 2010 Barolo, it would benefit from much more aeration than this CdP will. If this were a 2010 California pinot, it probably needs little or no aeration to show its best.
2 Likes
So I opened the wine following the advice the thread. First of all, I am swearing off the aerator. I opened the bottle and poured out just a drink planning to leave it open for an hour. Color was beautiful and the scent was very powerful as was the first drink or two. I left the bottle open for a hour then drank half the bottle over the an hour or so. It had mellowed somewhat. I saved the other half for the next day as I only drink red wine and my wife either white or rose’. I will just say over all I was a little disappointed. While flawed, my strategy has been to go by WS aggregate scores where every bottle I’ve drank with a score of 94 or greater I have loved and would buy again. This wine has a 94 rating and I expected to really like the wine. After consuming it, I would have expected it to have a WS score of 92. I thought it was good but not exceptionally good. Maybe it was just a little too much for my untrained pallet. Anyway, I’m enjoying trying different wines and appreciate the help from this site as I have no wine buddies to drink and explore with.
2 Likes
I wouldn’t think of it as “I didn’t like it as much as the magazine score therefore it’s a shortcoming of mine.”
Or that it’s necessarily a shortcoming of the magazine either.
It’s just one small step on the long journey of learning what you like. Regions, producers, age, aeration, temperature, stemware, all of it.
2 Likes
I mostly agree, but would open the bottle 3-4 hours in advance, 2010 is a strong vintage.
Then decant for 20-30 min.
I did it with the 2001 Charvin recently, worked perfectly.
1 Like
I expect your method would work too. To know which one I think works “best,” I would have to try them both. This might be an interesting experiment, but not really a very valuable one. This is an excellent wine. It will benefit from some type of airing. My original message intended to say that almost any method of giving it that airing will work. The particular details of which to choose I leave to personal preference.
1 Like