TASTINGS

By DOROTHY J. GAITER AND JOHN BRECHER

WSJ.com

Decanters Are Nice Gifts,

But Do You Need Them?

April 25, 2003

We were at a fancy restaurant smack in the middle of California's Wine Country that was proud of its wine list. On the list was a Chardonnay with some age on it. There has always been debate about how well California Chardonnay can age, so we ordered it. After showing us the label, the waitress opened the bottle several feet away and, before we knew it, poured the entire bottle into a very pretty decanter. Then, to our surprise, she shook up the decanter until the wine had a little bit of a beerlike head on it. She did this to "aerate" the wine, to get air to it so the wine would open up and soften more quickly.

After a couple of minutes, she brought the foamy wine to the table for us to taste. Sad to say, it tasted old. It clearly was once quite fine, but it was now tired and lacked any vibrant fruit. Would we have tasted at least one great mouthful of old fruit had the wine not been decanted and shaken up? Well, we'll never know, will we?

A Hot-Button Issue

In writing this column over five years, we have discovered that people are often more passionate about the issues surrounding wine than wine itself. We get good response whenever we write about Merlot, but when we write about subjects like whether to smell a cork at a restaurant, we get deluged.

Take decanting -- please. Over the years, we have often been asked whether wines should be decanted, probably by people who got the most beautiful decanter for their wedding but have never used it. This is a highly controversial question. In Wine Spectator, Thomas Matthews, now the magazine's executive editor, wrote in 1996 that decanting was fine if the wine was throwing sediment, but "in all other cases, decanting is useless at best, harmful at worst." Mr. Matthews told us he still feels the same way, though he says he would also decant wines that are so young that it would be "brutal" to simply pour and drink them. Otherwise, he said, "I like to watch the wine develop from the beginning in the glass."

Five years later, in the same magazine, columnist Matt Kramer wrote: "I've yet to have a wine that was the worse for decanting -- and I've had a good many that were better for the quick aeration decanting offers." He also told us he still feels the same way, especially for young wines. "I've never seen a young wine degraded by it. I've seen them noticeably improved by it. Dramatically improved, I doubt. But does it hurt the wine? I'd say the answer is no."

The famous wine expert Emile Peynaud argued in his book "The Taste of Wine" that decanting was useless, often harmful, and a silly relic of a time before winemakers knew how to clarify wines, which then needed to be decanted to separate the good stuff from the yucky. "This gave birth to a rite which still exists even if, in the absence of any sediment, it no longer serves a purpose." He argues this so passionately that he soon moves into bold face: "Only bottles which have a deposit need to be decanted."

On the other hand, Hanzell Vineyards, one of California's first cult wineries, specifically recommends that its wines, both red and white, be decanted before serving. Jean Arnold Sessions, the winery's president, says she has a "passion for decanting significant Chardonnays, the ones that usually are meant to age." Adds her husband, Bob Sessions, the winery's consulting winemaker, retired after almost three decades as its general manager and winemaker: "When oxygen hits, it starts freeing up the aroma and bouquet in a young wine." They define "young" as a serious wine made since 1990.

We received three really lovely decanters for our wedding. That was 24 years ago, and we do keep meaning to use them, but we rarely decant anything. One of the wondrous things about good wine is how it changes after it's opened. It changes as its temperature changes, as it gets more air, as it pairs with different foods. We enjoy tasting the wine from beginning to end. If we had to give a single, overall, one-word piece of advice on decanting, it would be this: Don't.

That said, the way we drink wine affects our decision, too. To begin with, we recommend glasses that hold at least 20 ounces, pouring only a small amount into them. We like the way we can slosh the wine around and put our noses deep into the glass to smell the wine. With glasses that large, the wine is getting plenty of air. Moreover, we have always lingered over dinner, and over wine. We tend to spend more than an hour drinking a bottle of wine, and often two hours. Over all of that time, if the wine needs to aerate, it certainly will.

Clearing Things Up

To be sure, if an old wine is throwing a lot of sediment, you might want to decant it to pour the clear wine off the sediment. (If you're at home and have the time, stand the bottle up for a couple of days before you want to drink it to let the sediment sink to the bottom. Open carefully. Put a flashlight on a table pointing up. Hold the decanter with one hand and the bottle with the other, with the light shining through the neck of the bottle. Pour. When you see the sediment, stop. If you don't have the luxury of waiting for two days, just decant. In any event, be prepared to drink right away.) If there's not much sediment, we'd especially urge you not to decant older wines; like our Chardonnay, it might already be somewhat tired, and the air could take away its last, weak flourish of fruit. Besides, if it's not too gritty, we sometimes drink the last sediment-filled drops.

If you're drinking a great big, very young red wine in a hurry -- say, it's a business meeting where everyone is going to drink an expensive young Zinfandel, eat and run -- you might consider decanting so the wine will soften more quickly. But that gets to our second most important point: Even if you think decanting is the right thing to do, taste any wine before you decant it. If you taste the wine first and it needs decanting -- maybe it tastes "tight" or mouth-puckering or you suspect it's hiding -- you can still decant. If you decant first and the wine seems to have lost something, you can't put the genie -- or wine, in this case -- back in the bottle.

Our most important point? The one we make all the time: If you want to decant, do it. If not, don't. Wine is a subjective experience. If you enjoy wine more when you increase the anticipation with decanting, if you believe that decanting is the best way to release the wine's full taste, or if you simply enjoy pouring from a pretty decanter, terrific. After all, if two respected writers at Wine Spectator don't even agree, who is to say that you're right or wrong?

Certainly, we disagree about wines from time to time, and that doesn't make either of us wrong. Among the many things we agree on, though, is that the best time to haul out a pretty decanter is when the person who gave it to you is coming over.