So the king of snark calls me out for snarking. Rich indeed. It was a joke. Seems as your Vinous subscription expires, so does your sense of humor. Maybe Galloni has no impact on the wine world, but he sure seems to get you tuned up. I will leave you to your rants and raves.
Very good, Mel…a name from outta the past. It was, indeed,AlexisBespaloff…in the NewYork magazine.
I did the same sort of tasting test with so 20+ wines with my wine group back in the late '70’s. Did the complete statistical analysis a la Amerine&Roessler.
Only 2 wines were found to be improved by “breathing”…on a statistically significant basis at the 99% confidence level. Both of those wines had flaws…
one being very reductive, the other high SO2 level. It was published in a 3-part series in the WineSpectator…way back when that was a quality publication…
a tabloid newspaper format published by BobMorrisey down in SanDiego. About 10 yrs later, did the same experiment w/ 8 Barolo/Barbaresco. Same result…
none improved by “breathing”.
Yet it is futile to do these experiments. Because there is always flaws in the methodology…you picked the wrong wines, the wines were not old enough, you didn’t
allow them to “breathe” long enough, you used the wrong shape of decanter, you used the wrong stemware, yada/yada/yada. People “know” that wines are improved
by “breathing”, that young wines need to “breathe” to soften the tannins. They don’t want their “known wisdom” to be rejected by others, even when presented by data.
Have I ever had a wine that I thought would be improved by “breathing”?? Of course I have. But I find it rare in practice. So I always just P&P my wines.
As a practical matter, how can I know, a priori, if a wine needs to be dacanted to “breathe”??? Maybe if you’d had that same wine a few days before.
So…I have a btl before me of a Ridge Toffinelli Zin '81 to try. Would somebody who knows that “breathing” will improve a wine please tell me how many
hours ahead I should allow the wine to “breathe”?? Puleeze help me out here. Surely someone “knows”.
Tom
When it’s convenient. Kerin O’ Keefe too. 
So it would seem.
Tom,
Did anybody point out that you are a physicist and therefore incompetent to perform experiments?? Did anybody tell you that Richard Feynman was dead and therefore the o rings really worked??
Retailers and wine bars are always trying to get people to get people to attend their tastings, yet I have never seen this sort of experiment on offer.
We pulled in a full crowd twice. It’s a subject that gets people stirred up and would be a good one for a retailer looking for some attention.
I do apologize for hijacking the CDV thread. I am sneaky that way.
Three things:
(1) I doubt that any of [vast majority] of old-wine drinkers here – including Bill Klapp – would tell you that they know how long to decant your '81 Ridge. That’s both the point and the problem.
(2) That’s a lot of hand-waiving about methodology you’re doing there. I mean, fair enough if you’ve explained your perfectly designed Barolo/Barbaresco test in the past and had people reject it for dumb reasons. But the result you got is so far removed from the experience of every single regular drinker of older Nebbiolo on WB – a category that might even include me pretty soon – that I’m not surprised people question the methodology. Simply put, I’ve never had a fit, older (15+ years) Nebbiolo that I didn’t like more after decanting and several hours of exposure than I did when I popped it. And I taste when I open the bottle every time. So at a minimum, I wish you or Mel would explain what you think is going on there if it isn’t (a) flawed methodology, or (b) a product of mass delusion.
(3) Notwithstanding (1) and (2), I’d love to see somebody organize this experiment through WB so we can agree on some parameters. I actually am open to the possibility of being surprised. But if I were designing the experiment, I’d probably want it to be run at least 2-3 times. I’d propose starting with 27 bottles – 9 each of three quality Barolo/Barbarescos from 1978 or 1989. Each run would involve 9 bottles opened in three stages: 1 of each 12 hours ahead, 6 hours ahead and 15 minutes ahead, respectively. Then I’d have a group of 6 or so taste each wine (with the order of the wines randomized for each taster) all at the same time.
'Tis true, Mel. I am a theoretical physicst and, therefore, incompetent to perform experiments. I figured out, very early on in my education,
that experimental physics was not for me.
Tom
Hardly a question of convenience, nor an endorsement of Larner or O’Keefe individually (force me to pick and I will take O’Keefe, however), nor even an endorsement of Tanzer, for that manner, but you boys know that. The consensus of the Barolo-reviewing wine-reviewer community says that the 2010 Monprivato is a seriously good wine. Your boy says not, twice. All that I am saying is that he lacks the breadth and depth of experience to allow me to believe that there is any chance that he is right and the others are all wrong. Do either of you have anything to offer in Galloni’s defense that should persuade me to reconsider?
Tom, based upon your posting here, it seems like you drink a lot of “pop-and-pourable” wines. The overwhelming majority of CA wines are manufactured for just that purpose. (Curiously, I agree with Larry that, while, say, new-release Nebbioli, Burgundies and Bordeaux may be best served by pop, pour and quick consumption before they shut down, many young CA reds exhibit just the opposite profile and may actually benefit from a little air.) At the risk of disappointing you, however, I must tell you that you are not, alas, my go-to guy for decanting advice on Baroli and Barbareschi from the 1960s and 1970s… 
Here is the answer for your Zin, however: if it has thrown sediment, decant it upon opening. Taste it. If it meets with your approval, drink it. If it is not yet time to drink it, clean its bottle, decant the wine back into the bottle, and cork it, to minimize aeration of a ready-to-drink wine. If, upon tasting, it does not suit you, you might want to leave it in the decanter and check in on it now and again, tracking its progress until it is ready to drink. Of course, the real problem here is knowing when your wine is at peak drinkability. That requires a lot of tasting and contemplation, and it is obviously a highly subjective, personal undertaking. Only you can “know” how much aeration your wine needs, and you can only know if a given wine benefits from aeration if you aerate it…
Mel was right, by the way, that there is no evidence that aeration softens tannins. Impacts them, yes. Perhaps allows blossoming fruit to overtake the tannins, which is what I believe happens. But softens them or dissipates them? Absolutely not. If the tannins are there, continued exposure of the wine to air, past its pleasurable drinkability, will eventually mute the fruit again and allow residual tannin and acid to dominate.
Thanks for your response, Bill.
I will not at all dispute the claim that some wines are improved by “breathing”. Part of my problem is in the procedure. If I have an old wine I want to drink w/ my meal,
how the heck do I know if it needs to breathe?? I don’t want to be monkeying around for hours/days w/ the wine, tasting & retasting it, until I finally think it’s
been improved by its breathing…and then have my meal…finally.
As to your last point…w/ that Mel & I totally agree. Yet I’m astounded how you can pick up any authoritative wine book and it will admonish you
to decant young/tannic red wines to “soften” the tannins. That idea is pervasive throughout the wine world. And folks swear by Venturis and such.
Tom
Way out of my depth here, but I always thought that the studies that ‘proved’ no benefit from letting wines breath were focused on just pulling the cork, which is not decanting. I remember reading a convincing argument that the small aperture allowed very little of the wine to contact air. Hence removing a little wine when ‘audozing’ (sp?) or pouring into a vessel with a wider neck.
Far be it for me to try to convince you of anything. Antonio could be wrong about this wine in the sense that he may later say it is a great wine. The fact is that every taster I respect who I have tasted with has at one point or another disagreed with me on a wine or a set of wines, esp. a young wine. And that is tasting from the same bottle. I know Antonio. He is not like Parker who insists his opinion is the only one. Even the best professors and lawyers are wrong some times, too. Having trashed Monica and Kerin, it is disingenuous of you to invoke their opinions here to try to prove your point. And to say “he lacks the breadth and depth of experience” is just silly. He’s tasted far more Nebbiolo than you or me. And in the end, it is his opinion. I haven’t tasted the 2010 Monprivato, but I bought it. I respect Antonio more than any other wine critic out there, but I don’t think he’s perfect and I trust Mauro. It doesn’t all have to be an opportunity to trash someone just because you disagree with them.
In terms of decanting to “soften” the tannins, it’s worth noting that you never step into the same river twice. Not only has the river moved on, but your legs are now wet the second time. When you taste tannic red wines, not only does the wine (at least potentially) change/evolve in the glass, but your tongue has been coated with wine and thus tannins. If the tannins are binding to your taste receptors, then you may not perceive the wine to be as tannic after drinking it for a while as you did when you took your first sip with a fresh palate. As always, your mileage may vary.
Bruce
1 Like
You need to speak for yourself on that one. Robo-tasting for a decade or so means very little to me. DRINKING a broad range of the finest examples of Nebbiolo spanning 60+ years counts for something in my book. On that basis, he has most assuredly not tasted far more Nebbiolo than I have, and more to the point, I see less and less evidence that he is learning anything from what he does taste. Among other things, waking up one morning and deciding that he is not only a Piemonte expert, but an Italy expert in general and also a Champagne, California, Burgundy and Bordeaux expert, has further dissipated the Piemontese experience base that he was on his way to developing…
Here is what normally happens with a bottle of relatively young red wine ( I don’t think any here favors decanting his 47 DRC three hours in advance):
1/the bottle is opened and decanted.
2/people have a glass…
3/everyone says how x and y the wine is
4/as the bottle is being finished everyone says, Wow, now it’s really tasting great…
So, did the tasters adjust to the wine or did the wine open up??
My point is this: try the experiment.
Tom did and he agrees with me. The rest of you have anecdotal data.
Mel-yours is anecdotal as well.
Anecdotally speaking, yes.
This does give me an idea: present a paper to the Wine Economics people on this subject. It will be the best PR for them since they punked the Expectorator.
See, that’s not a good experiment for exactly the reason you suggest. There are multiple explanations, and people are tasting over time. If instead you open multiple bottles of the same wine at different times and then taste them at the same time, you isolate the difference air makes (discounting bottle variation issues).
You could also do this experiment much more simply than I proposed earlier with a single bottle of wine using Coravin. “Pour” a quarter-bottle into a vessel, and then pour the other 3 quarters every two hours, and then taste them all at the same time.
And then you would know how that bottle reacted to air at different stages. Given all the vagaries of corks and provenance each bottle would likely react in a different way.
The Coravin idea could save a lot of money. That could enable some of you to do it at home.
I don’t know that any experiment done with actual tasters is going to be perfect. But I would put it another way: did any of the experiments Tom and I performed prove the idea that wine improves with aeration??