I pour a small glass to free some surface, and to check the wines current state. If it feels open and good to go I re-cork it. If not then I let it breath in the bottle.
I had much more success with this than decanting (not that a proper decant is not required in some cases)
I think there are a lot of factors at play that could affect things.
the wine isn’t completely still, it was agitated but opening
and will take awhile to become still; that combined with air time would expose more wine than one would think.
This would be easy to test with a relatively clear bottle and food coloring; you’d just assume there would be more diffusion than that.
the improvement in the wine may be not at all related to oxygen.
As I mentioned above I’ve done this experiment blind with one bottle opened earlier and kept at cellar temp and one popped immediately before service and almost everyone preferred the bottle with air time. It’s a very easy test to do.
I think I might be misunderstanding this? But clearly opening a wine has an effect on it.
I mean, if I open a wine and let it just stand around for a few days it will most likely be shot or atleast very different to a bottle of the same wine that wasn’t opened?
This is all based on some “science” that was posted a few years ago on here to make the argument that opening bottles without decanting them doesn’t appreciably change the wine.
the owner of fairchild wine once told me wine cant breath out of a dime size opening so he opens it some time like hours in his cellar then brings it out to decant prior to serving at a appropriate temp and assuming we are referring to red only but i feel to decant and aerate is a very good process in order to appeciate the most out of the wine