Most all of mine recently have come from Rare Wine, which supposedly sourced them from restaurant cellars in SPain, except for LdH. I guess I’ll have to go back and try pop and pour, but most of the wines I’ve had older than the 1990’s have taken 1-2 hrs to wake up, and nothing has shown signs of fading. Certainly the LdH wines take a while for me to open, but I don’t think I have anything older than the 90’s.
John, I am definitely not anti-decanting with Rioja, nor do I believe that it will not benefit from decanting. I am saying that, for optimal enjoyment, decanting is mandatory where sediment exists, but not where it clearly does not. I drink mostly old Rioja, and I decant whenever it does not strike me as opening quickly enough in the glass…
This is really an very interesting post . There are many different topics really .
Agree with double decanting being positive , especially with young wines .
While you are probably right about the slow oxigenation method being over rated , I still do it , maybe out of pleasure and also because it is a practice I learned from my parents . Francois Audouze never claimed he invented it , as it was more or less common practice decades ago . But it helps remove bad smell a little , especially with old wines ( after all , the wine is " trapped " for many years , it needs time to recover ) . I like the romance of being in my cold cellar and slowly removing the cork of a really old bottle . It’s difficult and I can take my time . More importantlyy , I then leave the bottle to breathe in the cold cellar , temperature is critical.
I know little about old Nebiolo , I am almost always disappointed , even with the most famous bottles like Montfortino . So probably I do it all wrong . Nebiolo ( old and young ) should be decanted hours in advance and left in the cellar ? Your explanation above is very helpful .
I have nowhere near the experience of Mr. Klapp, nor probably many others on this board, but still another few data points.
Over the last 2 years I have drunk about 70 nebbiolos from the 60’s and 70’s, all high quality but not terribly exalted examples, and from generally well-regarded vintages. I usually stand them up for 2+ months, and splash decant about 8-10 hours before dinner. Sometimes I leave them in the decanter, sometimes I pour them back into the rinsed bottle. Either way, they are enjoyed with dinner and almost without exception the last glass is better than the first. Those few for which there are remains which make it to the next day seem no worse for the experience.
While I used to share the trepidation which may come with leaving an old and potentially fragile (according to received wisdom) bottle unattended for so long, experience has shown me that for well-aged nebbiolo, if one wants a wine with nice color, full bouquet, and some fruit on the palate and finish, lots of air is the way to go, and these wines are very hardy.
Just my FWIW
I’m not anti-decanting BTW, quite the opposite but it’s just that with a wine that’s old, you do run the risk of losing what little life remains if you decant w/out knowing. If you know the wine, and you know it improves, then by all means decant, whether it’s young or old.
Lots of good info here - thank you all. The only thing missing is… what temp to server Old Barolo? I assume on the cooler side, but didn’t know if that means 62F or 67F
No different from most other reds, Brian, and, of course, the most difficult thing to control with precision. Mid-60s to low 70s is probably ideal, but if one must err, it needs to be on the warmer side, shy of 75, not in the high 50s or low 60s. Nebbiolo will be forgiving within a decent temperature range, and if it is served too warm, at home or in a restaurant, you can always ice it briefly to plump up the fruit.
Thanks Bill. I was surprised at the last Festa del Barolo where the latter wines HAD to have been ~ 60F at best. Although I suspect that was an accident more than intentional
they warm up in the glass pretty fast, so in a large tasting, it’s best to pour them fairly cool. the worst thing is for them to get too warm from the get-go because it’s hard to put your glass in an ice bath.
This is John Morris’s birthday present. He requested that I separate my thoughts on decanting from the lengthy and multi-faceted Wine-Searcher article with which I started this thread. There follows my lengthy and multi-faceted content. Happy birthday, John!
Some particularly powerful old Nebbioli, notably those from structured vintages like 1964 and 1978, can take DAYS rather than mere hours in a covered decanter (ideally at cellar temperature) to fully open and reveal their best qualities. For example, the 1964 Monfortino, thought to be a “lesser” Monfortino by most reviewers from Sheldon Wasserman forward, recently took a full 48 hours to blossom and reveal its brilliance, with no detectable loss of aromatics. If a Nebbiolo-based wine is sufficiently old to have thrown sediment, it is never a good idea to aerate the wine on its dregs. If time is limited, at a minimum, the double-decanting or “Bordeaux decant” described above should be employed. (It is, as noted in the article above, essential to stand the bottle up for a sufficiently long time to allow the almost microscopic suspended particles unique to old Nebbiolo to settle to the bottom; weeks, and even months, of standing time are common among experienced Nebbiolo drinkers.) The so-called “Audouze” method of aeration, favored by many, does virtually nothing for Barolo and Barbaresco, which require substantial amounts of oxygen to blow off bottle must and open properly. “Audouzing” is best employed for wines so old that they are unlikely to yield a whiff or two of aroma before giving up the ghost. New-release Nebboli, on the other hand, where there typically is no sediment, will most often benefit from the “pop-and-pour” approach, since such wines often have a tendency to close down quickly and become impenetrable in a very short time.
The optimum time for aeration will vary for every Nebbiolo, and in a perfect world, one will allow enough time to test the wine every few hours. When the wine strikes you as being sufficiently open and aromatic for peak drinkability, the wine can be decanted back into its clean bottle and re-corked. The amount of additional aeration after such re-corking will be negligible.
This translation of a piece by the Bordeaux reviewer Jean-Marc Quarin offers some red meat to the discussion:
"Among the least reflective practice, here is the astounding case of the double decanting. It is about the transfer into a decanter, followed by an immediate return into the bottle. What kills the nose and makes the tannin coarse and dry on the finish. The flavors have been so driven by the ventilation that they give the impression of not coating the tannin anymore. A terrible choc! Yet this practice is spreading more and more, for convenience, out of ignorance, and especially because operators no longer taste. They think the wine is stable and above all suspicion.
In the Châteaux, it is common that visitors are served with a wine poured in a decanter and poured back into the bottle in order to present them the label. It would suffice to settle into an empty and already labelled bottle to prevent this deadly return.
The height is to meet the owners or relatives of famous consultants who, during a visit of the Château, tell you that there is the need to process the grapes gently, advocate the use of gravity, absence of pumping, ageing on the lees, no racking to keep all the fruit, in short, everything that can stress the wine, and then, boom! serve you the wine decanted twice, without even realizing they are speaking of a taste that it no longer has.
Finally, open a bottle in advance is useless if it is not made at least eight hours in advance. Too little oxygen passes through the neck. As Emile Peynaud said in “Le Goût du vin”, more oxygen is dissolved in the 15 seconds of serving a glass, than in eight hours of opening the bottle.”
I agree with Quarin that “slow-o” is myth rather than reality, owing to the inability of oxygen to interact with wine because of the painfully obvious “bottlenecking” problem (save very minimal oxygenization over many, many hours). A little bottle funk blowing off is not to be equated with proper aeration, and only lack of decanting experimentation and experience leads people to believe that Audouzing is useful for anyone but Audouze and his cadaverous wines. I agree with Quarin that wine aerates best in the glass, which is why many Bordeaux drinkers in particular favor enjoying suitably accessible Bordeaux in the glass over many hours. Bordeaux is not Nebbiolo, however. It needs much less air, perhaps in part because it is a blend of different grapes. (Chateauneuf-du-Pape also does well with relatively little aeration.) I could not disagree more with Quarin about double decanting. Decanting is essential to any wine which has thrown any degree of sediment, and decanting back into a clean bottle, in whatever time frame is desirable, is merely a way to stop aeration when the process is suitably complete. The “delicacy of wine” business is utter foolishness. Wine can be decanted slowly and carefully with no adverse impact on the wine, and much positive impact from the decanting process, as described in the other thread. Indeed, some people who have not stood their wines upright far enough in advance are able (with some difficulty, to be sure) to decant their wines out of a cradle, allowing the sediment to stay collected on the side of the bottle. (That is not the best approach, however, for old Nebbiolo and its notoriously fine suspended particulate, which is best dealt with by standing the bottle upright for weeks or months in advance.)
Bordeaux is not Burgundy, and it is most particularly not Nebbiolo. The latter two benefit enormously from aeration, whether it is required for 2 hours or 2 days, and old Nebbiolo cannot even be properly understood and appreciated without it. (Notice how often your own Marius Fries gets great results as he follows a bottle of Nebbiolo-based wine over 2 or 3 days, even starting with a pop and pour.) The amount of aeration required varies from bottle to bottle, and it is certainly true that the exigencies of modern life often do not allow enough time for proper decanting and aeration, but that is little excuse for wines which are to be served at home. There is considerable paranoia about loss of aromatics in the decanting process, but that, too, is more myth than reality. First of all, there are typically some nasty aromatics that MUST blow off in old Nebbiolo (and other wines as well) before the wine can be enjoyed. Next, Nebbiolo does not readily give up all of its aromatics in one initial shot, as an old, very delicate might; they emerge and evolve over time. (I have had few older Nebbioli where the aromatics and palate did not emerge together. Those that yield their aromatics quickly tend to be wines not long for this world anyway.) If one is still paranoid, however, do a quick double-decant back into a clean bottle at a minimum. (At least your wine will not be flawed by its own sediment.) Second choice would be to leave the wine in the decanter but to cover the decanter. That at least gives the wine a fighting chance at decent aeration. The optimum option for both aeration and aromatics? Decant the wine and place the open (or covered) decanter back in your cellar or another cool spot to open slowly. (Something akin to slow-o, but where there is actually aeration going on.) If you still think that aromatics or palate are at risk, do this: open a carbonated soft drink and leave the can at a constant 40-55-degree temperature, and see how long it takes the drink to go flat. Finally, after a properly decanted wine is poured, a quick swirl will be all one needs to understand that the aromatics live on. Even if it were true that the proposed method gives up at least something on the aromatics front, I would settle for 90% of the aromatics and 100% of the fruit and complex secondary and tertiary flavors of an older Nebbiolo every time.
Add up the tasting notes that you have read on this and wine boards and in blogs over the years where the author notes, “I think that this wine could have used more air”, and how many false readings of entire VINTAGES (usually of wines not old enough to make opening them profitable), also most often involving improperly decanted and aerated wines, there are out there, and you begin to understand the order of magnitude of the problem. Tasting new-release wines with no sediment at events like La Festa is one thing (indeed, such wines risk getting too much air, and would perhaps be better served by popping and pouring, even if that might be impractical for large tasting events), but tasting old wines in general, and old Nebbiolo in particular, is another thing entirely. For that reason, I favor fewer wines being given optimal, individualized preparation and being served at home, or transported to a restaurant after double decanting (careful transportation being no problem at all when the dregs and fine sediment have been decanted away), over tasting events where wines necessarily get “one size fits all” treatment and can show well, but never in peak form.
This is not rocket science. It is simply the product of too much ignorance, too little experimentation and too many old wine’s tales being passed around, along with a huge number of wine lovers desperately and subjectively clinging to what they choose to believe because, well, it is theirs and nobody else can disprove subjective beliefs. It rather galls me that sommeliers are among the biggest offenders in all of this, because there is no possibility that most older wines can be properly served, absent arrangements being made by diners hours or days in advance. Open your mind, do the experimentation (starting with the half decanted, half slow-o’ed bottle test) and see what you find. It takes a while to learn what constitutes peak drinkability for a given individual’s palate, so a lot of experimentation with aeration times is required at first with older Nebbiolo. Trust me…it will be worth the effort.
When asked on the other board how I would define “older Nebbiolo”, this was my answer:
Not an easy question. For me, I might drink 2005, 2008 (certain wines), 2009 or perhaps 2011 Nebbioli while they are “young”, which, for sake of argument, I will arbitrarily define as within 10 years of the vintage. Most of the best wines from years like 1989, 1996, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008 (again, some of the more structured wines) and 2010 are still far too young to drink, and if you did not pop and pour them upon release, there is not much reason to open them now. 1999 and 2000 both seem to be a mix of wines becoming drinkable and those best left alone. (Let somebody else drink the 2002s (except the Monfortino) and 2003s, and let others take the young wines “for the team” as well.)
I would put vintages like 1997 and 1998 in the “middle age” category. Because they are weak vintages, I would put 1993 and 1995 in either the “middle age” or the “older Nebbiolo” category. Then, it is pretty much free sailing in “older Nebbiolo” waters, beginning with the 1990 vintage (1989’s best wines largely excluded) and working backward. There are some poor vintages along the way, of course, and there are going to be particular wines from stronger vintages like 1982, 1978 and 1964 that may not be into their prime drinking windows yet, but even there, the wines will typically yield pleasure with enough aeration. (Good example: 1978 Giacosa Barolo Collina Rionda Riserva Speciale; nowhere near as ready to drink as any other Giacosa Rionda Riserva.) By and large, however, all 1990 and earlier vintages qualify as “older”. The key is that, despite that cutoff, some wines are always going to be younger and less generous than others, and that is where the individualized treatment of each wine that I recommend above comes into play so profitably. As you might imagine, you cannot even expect two bottles of the same wine from the same case to perform identically. The only great wine truism that remains true is that there are no great wines, just great bottles.
What I have set forth above is biased in the sense that it does not take into account those drinkers, and particularly those reviewers and retailers who taste wines for a living who are far more tolerant of tannins and, if applicable, oak than many of the rest of us are. I do believe, however, that every good wine has a “sweet spot” that will be recognized as such by every taster of the wine, and everything that I do with older wines (which are maybe 15 or 20-to-1 old Nebbioli to other wines these days) is aimed as drinking “sweet spot” wines as often as possible. I am enjoying serious success at that in recent years…
Are there board rules about attempting to publish a book within a thread?
Actually, nice summary Bill. Oops–!!! 1+
Only if I start charging for it…