I agree, but I wouldn’t call it a scientific experiment.
We do scientific experiments to understand and predict normal observation. When we witness a rock falling, we could be hallucinating. All of the psychological pitfalls humans have could be at play, but it is still an observed phenomenon that in time we can find ways to experiment and test. We don’t say, it didn’t fall.
In regards to the fact that some people don’t experience the change in the wine, I would reference that there are also varying limits of what each individual can perceive. Some can perceive smaller amounts of TCA than others, and when they do, that doesn’t mean that TCA isn’t there for those who don’t perceive it.
If we all agree that the amount of oxygen couldn’t diffuse through an entire bottle of wine from simply removing the cork, that still wouldn’t be proof that the wine couldn’t have experienced any perceivable change. The assumption that there is no perceivable change is as unscientific, and subjective as experiencing the change itself. All that science proves, if we can say proves, is diffusion of oxygen through the bottle could not have caused a perceivable change.
I personally do not know what is happening, if anything is happening in the wine at all, or if it is all in our heads.
What I never understand is how topics like this seem to become so much like religious dogma on either side, and how there is often an aim to discredit the person with the differing idea, rather than discuss the idea itself.
I know there are some people here who say pouring wine into 4 oz bottles and storing long term results in essentially an unchanged wine, or materially so. That is very much not my experience. I tried storing some wines after tasting in those bottles, sealed, kept cool, no headspace. I found the wines were shot in not much more time than if a bottle had been left open. That said, I consider myself sensitive to oxidative notes in red wine and really don’t like it.
I don’t personally have a good answer on the larger decanting question and I’m not dogmatic about it. If I’m taking a 20 year old Barolo to a wine dinner I tend to double decant a few hours in advance if I can. This is likely the most difficult circumstance because you cannot, contrary to the points made in this thread, just wait longer if it isn’t showing well during the event. Sometimes I regret opening too soon, other times wish I could see what happens the next day. Sometimes both at once. This leads me to believe that it’s difficult to get it exactly right. Similarly, I don’t normally decant young Barolo but sometimes if the wine is very closed down I have done so to good effect. Other times it remains very closed and I wait for the next day. The good thing is that young nebbiolo seems robust with regard to showing oxidation so I’m not normally burned by waiting a day or even two, whereas that is not always my experience with other wines.
Never tried wine in small bottles, but it has a significant impact on whiskey. I have done that blind with my wife pouring from each the smaller bottle and the full size bottle. sbs the difference was clear, but if I did it from memory a year apart, I am not sure I would have known there was a difference.
With wine I have tried freezing half of a bottle for a year, and it remained pretty consistent with my memory of the wine prior. Never did a blind sbs with 2 young bottles though. Will try to run that in the next year.
The wine thing was during covid, split up for virtual tastings. Many here suggest and I believe still use this method and are happy with the long term storage results. I was not.
Yes, during Covid, I arranged a tasting with Larry Schaffer of Tercero, who shipped 4 oz. bottles to people in my group at a time of moderate temperatures (two-day shipping, as I recall). Two of us found several of the wines were significantly oxidized.
And I think that gets us into the chain reaction question Joseph asked above. Some oxygen is introduced when the wine is poured into the bottle. Does this small amount of oxygen then do a limited amount of damage, or does it continue to cause some reaction over time? These results suggest that either it continues to degrade the wine over time or else the seal on the bottles is not sufficient to prevent additional oxygen from entering. I suppose my response, to Sarah’s point above, is that I don’t really care on a scientific level because I know that this approach doesn’t work for me and am therefore not going to use it.
No. Because oxygen in the wine isn’t the only factor at work here (as most people assume in these discussions).
Volatile components dissolved in the wine can and do evaporate – and, as I understand it, at different rates – and that can happen without interaction with oxygen. So you can lose a lot of complexity with some wines if they sit in a decanter too long.
But in my experience, the aromas (volatiles) in some wines seem to be much slower to release. For instance, I find that with nebbiolo and Northern Rhone syrahs, which very often benefit from long decants (though the Rhones less than nebbiolo). Too often in my experience, wines were only opening up as we finished a bottle, and I regretted not decanting longer.
I assume the difference has to do with what the aroma components are chemically, and other factors like the alcohol level of the wine. (The temperature is also important, too, obviously.) Jamie Goode wrote something a while back about a controlled experiment showing that, if the alcohol level of the same wine was manipulated, higher alcohol wines showed less aroma. I think he postulated that that was because some components stay dissolved longer with more alcohol.
How to prepare a wine for serving is an endlessly entertaining (frustrating to some?) subject because it has no definitive answer. There are too many variables in each of multiple domains (wine, people, conditions, technique, and on) for there to be a single best way. This discussion has been going on for decades without resolution, and is likely to be just as unresolved decades from now.
Nor do I think that scientific explanations of the changes responsible for the differences in perception will be definitively worked out any time soon. There are too many things going on in the wine and not enough incentive to invest in research required to figure it all out. Unless some serendipitous findings from wine production or another field are applicable.
The best we can do is to try things that have worked for others and see how they work for us.
In my experience, the most important step in preparing a Nebbiolo with significant age is to stand it up for a month to let the ultra-fine sediment settle, and carefully decant it to separate the wine from the sediment.
I would consider a 2008 Barolo to be on the youngish side, though I’ve never had the Brovia in the OP. In my experience, Barolo in that age range usually improves after 2-8 hours in a decanter. That wide a range isn’t very helpful. As @Sarah_Kirschbaum pointed out, you can always give it more air, never less. Though there may be practical considerations if you want to serve it with dinner and don’t want guests staying overnight.
Though I understand why this seems (self-evidently) true, in my experience, it is not always the case. If you are planning to drink a wine at dinner–at a restaurant or at home–and you open it and it is very tight, you can’t really give it another 2-4 hours of air–drinking it at 10PM or midnight is now desirable or viable.
On OP’s question, my go to is @Ken_V, who seems to give many of the Barolos and Barberesco’s he drinks a fair amount of air. Besides the question of gnarly sediment, this has usually worked for me–pour in decanter and let sit for 2-6 hours, with some tasting to monitor progress. The story goes at least that many producers in Piedmont leave bottles open for days or even weeks, fwiw.
To be sure there are practical considerations. But even in the case you describe, if it’s just not showing, you can hold it for tomorrow, in most cases, and open something friendlier for now. I tend to get around that particuar one by just not opening very many bottles that I think will be horribly tight, if what I’m looking for is an enjoyable experience rather than an intellectual exercise or satisfying of curiosity.
I stand by the basic idea, though, and in most cases I err on the side of less. To be fair, I am not a member of the cult of long decants. Most wines lose freshness for me - old barolo being an exception - with a lot of air. I think the automatic 8-12 hours for nebbiolo is a mistake. I’ve been at dinners, some oragnized by very famous barolo drinkers, where that was the treatment, and we found most of the wines to be showing flat and or lacking in vibrancy, if not downright stale.
And, I think wines by any of these old-school producers, regardless of region, are going to be treated in similar fashion when it comes to serving them
Agreed. I should also clarify that this is my approach for Nebbiolo only. I can’t readily think of another varietal that I’d treat in the same way. I’ve always been amazed at the ability of Nebbiolo to evolve positively with significant aeration. There’s something magical about decanting a 50+ year old Barolo in your cellar and be met with somewhat muted aromatics and then coming back 24 hours later and walking into your cellar to be met with beautiful aromas as soon as you open the door!
Working with the idea that sediment in wine is neutral at best, I decant everything with age, but BAMA and Bandol rouge would be two that I’m careful about
I have found this $9 gadget works wonders with tight wines or flavor profiles I do not enjoy:
As for fine, complex wines, the inherent differences in grapes, age, storage conditions, and especially taste, make all the great recommendations in this thread a good guide for personal experimentation. It may be a cop out, but your own trial-and-error is probably the only right answer and it will vary by circumstance and wine. That’s how I figured out double decanting with a little time (1 hour) between decants worked best (for me) with Barolo younger than 20 years.
