No, it can help on wines regardless of age. A wine that is great on pop and pour doesn’t need to be slow ox. Would it change it? Maybe. I don’t know. It may still make them better.
a) it can’t make it better, the science is extremely clear on this
b) there’s no way to test and see if it does make it better. The act of pouring a wine out of the bottle into your glass changes the wine many orders of magnitude more than just leaving it open (which is nothing; but even if it did do something, pouring is a greater effect by a huge multiplier).
c) it’s impossible to do a blind trial and get statistical results of any significance. You’re never comparing wine from the same bottle. You don’t have a control. You only get one shot at tasting the wine from the slow ox’d bottle, then whatever’s left has been impacted much more than even some imaginary slow-ox could do.
It is nonsense. It does nothing. It can’t work, and it doesn’t. But people will continue to believe it does, and there’s no harm in that, except for believing in something that doesn’t exist lol.
3 Likes
I open the bottle, then put it under a bright light for 15 minutes, works every time.
2 Likes
a) the “science” isn’t testing slow oxing wines.
b) you pour the wine in both cases.
c) sure it’s not exactly the same bottle, but you could test it using say an entire case of wine, 6 bottles slow ox and 6 bottles pop and pour. It would be extremely unlikely that the slow ox wine would be better in all cases by pure chance.
Fluid dynamics are pretty complicated. Opening the bottle will agitate it, which will circulate wine throughout the bottle. You could easily test diffusion in this setting with a clear bottle of still wine and some food coloring.
3 Likes
This
1 Like
Um, there’s an entire thread that shows the results of doing exactly this, over many months. Maybe read it, it’s linked in this thread.
Not the same experiment. Also that entire thread is full of people making the exact arguments I made above. Maybe 2-3 ppl actually agreed with you.
1 Like
You asked for exactly the experiment I did, which shows conclusively that opening a bottle and just leaving it there doesn’t do anything, and then you claim it’s not the same experiment lol.
Yeah, people who have no idea about really basic science disagree. That doesn’t sway me.
A glass and a bottle aren’t the same thing. You aren’t physically opening a glass. Opening a bottle causes significant motion and agitation to the wine inside.
1 Like
You didn’t read the entire thread. And, nonsense.
Back when the Bespaloff article came oiut, I was running a tasting bar in San Francisco.
I read the article and thought, what a stupid wanker, wtf does he know about wine?
So, I promoted a series of tasting where we tasting three bottles of the same wine treated differently.
As I recall, we did this over two nights with eight different wines. One wine opened and decanted the day before.One opened and decanted an hour earlier and one opened ten minutes in advances and decanted.
All served blind.
Six out of eight wines …folks preferred the most recently opened. All I remember is that I thought the one afea where aeration would be the best solution, Barolo, I was wrong.
For those of you who run tasting programs this is a great idea to test.
2 Likes
This is not my area of expertise. So I will ask out of curiosity. If I open a bottle of wine and let it just stand around for a day? a week? a month? a year?.. there will be no difference compared to a bottle of the same wine without the cork removed?
I will say that I find that strange.
But when I “slow ox” I always make a small pour to introduce some air on purpose and to check the wines state. Then I let the bottle “breath” for many hours while following the wine carefully (often 8+ hours). In this scenario the wines certainly change, but it is ofcause not the same as just removing the cork and not doing anything. Hence my question.
Zach you’ve clearly gathered this is a controversial and often covered subject. However as a clinician and scientist who has reviewed many trials and been involved in the writing of many studies I am very sceptical of those who claim they have the answer, no further questions asked, answered or considered. Einstein considered quantum theory impossible until the proofs came in. Hawking regarded the Higgs boson as impossible but withdrew his objections as proof looked increasingly likely.
As a Burgundy explorer over 40+ years I’ve often marvelled with friends at wines that open in the glass over hours, wines that come to life after 6 hrs in a bottle where only 20mls has been sampled etc and that last 100mls that comes to life the next morning. I’m a great lover of double decanting Bordeaux of any age. Within my high-end wine group of 30 years experience together we still argue as to whether change can occur through a small coin size surface at the top of a bottle. But we do know that air in some form makes a difference that can be miraculous.
To conduct a proper clinical trial is possible but would require, commitment, an open minded group of at least 20 quality tasters, a crossover design structure that would need validation in a number of pilot trials and a complete double blind structure. This is an unlikely undertaking for it would require a discipline rare in wine groups ! My advice is to build your own experience, have an open mind and avoid those who think they absolutely know the answer to your question. Unless of course they can explain the RSV 2001 from Arnoux a few years back that seemed dead on arrival and after 2 nights standing corkless and upright in the cellar was magnificent.
As an old clinical scientist with a passion for combining the science and the art of medicine, I just think we don’t understand what many of us observe. Perhaps its quantum mechanics at work.
9 Likes
I personally find that merely opening the bottle to breathe does nothing.
Have tried slow-ox (removing some into a glass and letting it sit) has had some effect, more on the wine in the glass that I poured out of the bottle.
Double decanting, regular decanting, decanting with a sprinkle of pixie dust and then flown around the moon all have varying impact due to more exposure to air.
Bottom line…drink your wine and enjoy it. I appreciate the conversation.
1 Like
I was going to write up a protocol for a randomized clinical trial to test this, which is certainly possible, when I realized it wouldn’t really matter. Even if we showed it worked with p < 0.05 after a large expenditure of time and money I don’t think it’d convince people who don’t think it works.
4 Likes
Any light won’t work it has to be fluorescent.
I have been reluctant to reengage with this, as this somehow seems to be a volatile topic.
To anyone who knows the experiments of @Alan_Rath or other like experiments that have aimed to prove that slow oxing does not have an effect, has the removal of a cork with a bottle having built up pressure over time been accounted for?
Also, it seems there is a consensus that some volatile funk does blow off early. If that is true, doesn’t air replace the molecules that cause the funk? Does the air that is gradually replacing those funky molecules impact the wine at the same rate as the exchange? And lastly, does the volatility of wine cause diffusion to occur at a different rate than other liquids?
I am genuinely curious if any of this has been tested/ accounted for in any experiments.
While I understand Alan’s point about the science of oxygen diffusion/chemical reactions in liquids, I am like many others with firsthand experience that it makes a difference. I have had many older Nebbiolo and Bordeaux wines that were woody/tart/thin/acidic upon opening that transformed into much better and enjoyable wines following decanting/slow ox. I can’t rule out confirmation bias, but I’ve also had many that didn’t improve despite my fervent wish as they were not cheap wines. If perception is reality, I’m okay with that as I get to drink a nicer wine rather than dumping it.
1 Like
I think you are confused on the purpose of science. It neither proves nor disproves anything. Conclusions can be drawn based on evidence, but when new evidence is uncovered, those conclusions may need to be reevaluated. It’s a constant process and evolution, not a destination.
And tangentially, we have lots of evidence that shows that opening a bottle of wine and leaving it for some period of time changes the wine. The fact that science hasn’t figured out why doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
3 Likes
For me the question is more of what is actually happening, not whether the wines improve. If blind tastings keep showing it, the question is what are we not aligning on as we define slow oxing or what are the experiments not testing for.
I think if people settle down, we can find a better understanding and actually resolve this topic after all of these years.
When I slow-ox, I pour a tiny sample immediately, and let it breath for a few minutes in the glass, then make my assessment on what the wine needs. I assume most who slow-ox do this, so perhaps it is that initial pour that makes the difference?
Understanding this better can only be helpful to all of us.
1 Like