You pull a bottle from the cellar. You note a fair amount of sediment. Some is adherent to the side of the bottle, even when the bottle is upright. Do you:
Agitate the bottle to dislodge the sediment, planning to leave it upright for an extended time?
Decant or pour as usual after standing up?
Plan to have a filtering setup on hand when you open the wine?
No, yes, yes
Siphon it. Put the bottle on a raised surface, insert one end of a clean tube into the bottle, the other into a decanter at a lower level. Suck on the tube to get the flow going, and use that little taste to make sure the wine’s not corked. Watch as the contents of the bottle quietly, gently transfer themselves into the decanter with maximal yield and zero sediment. I like to shine a light through the bottle to guide the tube: you want it as low as it can go without getting into the sediment that has collected at the bottom of the bottle
edit> if I’m heading to a restaurant then I’ll wash out the bottle, agitate it to remove the stuck sediment, let it dry, and then pour back from the decanter into the bottle
Perform your normal routine: stand up for days/weeks ahead of time, slowly decant. Sediment or pigments that stay on the side of the bottle do not move off of it, as it has the staying power of a slug on a leaf. This is so common with syrahs. Don’t give it another second’s thought.
Under these conditions, I use a wine cradle that holds the btl at a near horizontal angle. Then carefully take out the cork and decant directly from the wine cradle.
Tom
I tend to poor of 80% of the contents steadily, and then pass the rest through an unbleached coffee filter paper. These seem much more effective than cloths or nylon meshes to me.
Exactly. This is so common with syrahs. I turn the bottle so the crusted side is up when I’m decanting so the flow of the wine is less likely to dislodge the crusted sediment. And I can’t ever recall it coming loose.
I do the same if there’s too much left in the bottle and I don’t want to dump it.
This
Dittos!
I use an organic paper towel sometimes, too.
Double decant. Decant through a filter, rinse the bottle out and pour the wine back into the bottle to serve.
It may sound nuts, but I think I can taste the difference because of residual water in the bottle.
It doesn’t sound nuts to me. You can always rinse the bottle with some wine before refilling. I don’t think the filtering is necessary at all to remove sediment, but I do understand maybe wanting to get the wine back into the bottle, without sediment stuck to the side.
Much prefer sediment stuck to the sides than fine particulate in the wine. I’ve always looked at this as best case scenario. Just treat the wine as you would any older wine and enjoy.
Personally I pour slow and steady with a source of light available (usually a phone flashlight) to watch the wine flow for cloudiness. Whether it does or does not go cloudy I usually still choose to reserve the last 3oz or so and pour that into a “dregs” glass. I then let that glass settle its sediment to the bottom during the decanting period and use it for tastes of how the wine is doing. Everybody wins ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
Leave the bottle upside down for an hour during the process. Problem solved
X
I do the same, especially with Nebbiolo, in a quartino.
I also do this, but I rinse the coffee filter paper with hot water first (same as I would do when making a pourover). This minimizes the transfer of undesirable paper flavor to the wine.
I try to decant from a cradle, then filter the dregs into a separate glass (just in case) if I’m drinking at home.
As far as rinsing and returning to the same bottle to take out for corkage, I’ll rinse it with distilled water and then set it upside down while the wine airs out in the decanter. If I need to return it to the bottle right away (leaving soon, don’t want wine to fall apart, etc), I’ll usually rinse the bottle with a bit of wine first. Sometimes I get cute and rinse the bottle with cheaper wine I already have open (either under Repour or in a small glass bottle in the fridge) if it’s the same varietal. If I don’t have that option, a splash of the (presumably expensive I’m taking out for corkage) decanted wine works too.
Being a port guy I tend to have a lot of unbleached cheese cloth on hand which is my preference over coffee filters or other similar products. If I know I am going to age a bottle for a while I will mark base of bottle to indicate sediment will be on opposite side (vintage port often comes premarked especially older vintages) . When doing my slow decant over cheesecloth I make sure mark is facing upwards so wine does not run along the sediment.