I wholeheartedly agree about serving temp–I’m very careful about decanting/double decanting yet keeping the wine at cellar temp. A wine should not be double decanted, then left on the counter to equilibrate at room temp–it should go right back in the cellar.
Otherwise, I think we’ve all developed our own idiosyncratic ways to deal with, prep, or not prep wines. I don’t think wines need to be cooled to 38 degrees to be decanted, and I’m not fearful of wines that are opened, decanted or not, becoming oxidized. that’s what happens when you open a bottle of wine. Double decanting for me starts a process of aeration that often takes 2-3 hours for many of these bottles. If you don’t allow for it, at least for me, I end up drinking a glass or two of a wine that is still restrained/closed. Then–if you are going to limit yourself to 1/2 bottle, you only have one more glass that might actually be open for business. Not aerating the bottle actually encourages more and perhaps excessive consumption, because, just as you are capping off your consumption, the wine is starting to open up…
Again, we all develop what works for us. double decanting works for me, allowing a bottle to open up, allowing for transport, and, if hosting, matching the prep that transported bottles have undergone.
We certainly all have our own probably illogical convictions. I don’t generally share the view that full aeration is the optimum default condition in which to experience wine, but I am in a minority.
Tom, I’m interested in your take on this. Although I might not want to miss the early aromatics on a very old (40-50+ yo) red Burgundy that I could experience slowly over a 3-4+ hour dinner, for the wines I am more commonly drinking in the 20-30 yo range and tasting over a more limited time frame, they are frequently opening up and showing their stuff over a period of hours, even in many cases after having been double decanted 2-4 hours before the tasting. And the ones popped and poured oftentimes are showing little to nothing and only starting to reveal a bit at the end of the tasting.
So I am curious what your default preference is. In a setting where one “lives” with a bottle over several hours over and following dinner, perhaps that might be a default preference given that setting…seeing the wine gradually open over several hours where you have at least half the bottle to savor. But in a different setting, perhaps more common in tastings, would you still prefer to experience that wine to be relatively closed down for 80+% of your time with it, and maybe only revealing itself in the last half of the last glass?
I ask, not to be argumentative, but I am curious as to whether there is a rationale in preferring to experience a cellared wine in its closed and less forthcoming state, particularly in situations where you may not be with it long enough to see it blossom and “emerge”?
It obviously depends on the wine, but as long as it is not actually ‘closed’, something that aeration very rarely ameliorates, I like latency and tension at least as much as I like relaxed expressiveness and I tend to feel in particular that the common habit of letting wines sit in the glass for prolonged periods denatures them entirely by means of warming and oxidation-they are still wine, but they are different and to my mind less interesting thus.
In the end, though, I am not too fussy, even about sediment, unless the wine gets warm, about which I am entirely unreasonable to the extent that I don’t really want to drink it in that state at all. Wine should be refreshing or it is nothing.
In my experience the burgundies I’ve opened just aren’t shut down for hours before becoming expressive. I have almost never decanted burgundy and the times I have, the wines showed less well than the same wine on PnP or slow ox. My contention is if the wine won’t show well with slow ox after an hour or two open, it wasn’t ready to drink to begin with.
I suspect we aren’t as far apart as it sounds. As usual with most wine prep/decanting discussions, things tend to veer off into areas that we aren’t really addressing.
I, too, would never leave a large pour in a glass to “open up”. This is a misguided approach–the wine will get too warm and fall apart, as Tom points out. And I don’t in general decant burgundy and leave in a decanter. What we’re talking about here is double decanting, where the wine goes right back in the bottle–different animal than just dumping in a decanter.
Perhaps the most perplexing thing to me is the discordance of opinion with regard to how long wines take to wake up with air. For me, there are plenty of wines in the 1993-1999 range that still need a couple hours to wake up after opening. Prior to that amount of time, they can be reticent, leaner than they ultimately will be, lacking somewhat in aromatics. Perhaps using the term “closed” is confusing to folks, as I think many only use this for wines in that in-between stage of younger development where nothing on earth will wake them up, also referred to as “shut down”.
Or perhaps we’re just drinking different wines. There are producers and vintages where the wines are firing on all cylinders from the get go, but likewise there are wines that should almost be opened the day before being consumed in hopes that they might wake up a bit.
Idk, I’ve opened probably 75 bottles of burg from my cellar this year and with 2 hours of slow ox only maybe 4 wines were a little reticient (20 Lignier MSD VV, 17 Rousseau Ruchottes, 01 Rousseau Beze, and 17 MG Clos Vougeot) and of those, 3 were relatively recent vintages. All of these more or less opened up within a little time in the glass.
Michael–I’m talking here about mature burgundy. Trying to compare young Burgundy with mature Burgundy is really an apples to oranges thing. As you know, decanting/airing young Burgundy generally isn’t needed and is often counter-productive.
Young Burgundy needs it the most. I can’t count how many times I’ve been at local retailer tastings with five Burgs in front of me, and it takes 30 minutes of air for the wines to resemble the printed notes and scores. I re-learn this lesson almost every time.
I personally never decant any burgundy. I like checking out burgs at different stages of the life cycle, but prefer medium term aging most of the time.
Well, we’ve done it yet again–turned Chris’ great tasting post into yet another Burgundy decanting thread. Never seem to come to any real consensus–sometimes I wonder if anyone reads this stuff and re-thinks how they handle their wines. At least we all still seem to enjoy good Burgundy.
What’s your view on nebbiolo with 30-60 years of age that takes hours of air to come out and express itself? I don’t think those wines are ever getting to a pop-n-pour stage.
I don’t have an opinion on that; I drink red burgs, champagne and Sauternes, that’s pretty much it. If I drink other wines (rare) it’s probably a lil bdx and Oregon whites.
That’s the very opposite of my experience. It just depends what one opens and when, though I have never looked for resemblance to printed notes and scores, which I would never even think of taking literally.
Last weekend I opened a 1949 Marchesi di Barolo at approximately 7pm.
Smelled fantastic.
I double decanted, went to dinner, and had the wine about 8:30 - quite fine.
Around 10:30 I poured some of what was left in the bottle and while it was still fine it wasn’t as sharply defined as earlier.
It had been at room temperature. My guess though is even if this wine had been kept at cellar temperature it would have been best within first three hours.
It wasn’t falling apart it just wasn’t his concise in how each component expressed itself.
Sure, there’s no exact science to any of these. It will always vary. Although I did note 30-60 years and yours was closer to 80!
Last weekend we had a bunch of nebbiolo from the 60s and 70s. The 64 and 67 Antoniolo Spannas needed 5-6 hours of air to get going and apparently were even better the next day. Same for the “humble” 71 Mascarello Nebbiolo d’Alba.
I’m hardly the biggest Piedmont geek and I know folks like to endlessly debate the nuances of aeration. But at a minimum I think it’s fair to say these things vary by grape/region and Piedmont nebbiolo often needs quite a bit of air, despite being ‘well-aged’.
More thread drift, but those 64 Spannas are such fun. I’ve been lucky enough to have it 3 times. Here’s most recent note from last year:
"Here’s what I wrote in 2019: “This was still super-fun—not quite as much leave-and-length as the bottle we opened last year, but still the slightly-dried raspberry and strawberry and small blackcurrant fruit teases the palate. I think Paul got these for something like $10 per. Lots of enjoyment here”
Don’t need to change much here. This remains an alive and fun wine, gently nostalgic about nebbiolo. A treat."