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Pastimes : Wine You Can Enjoy @ Under $20 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter V who wrote (1045)	12/31/2009 2:49:12 PM
From: Mark Marcellus	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1277

But I have always read that older wines need a lot of air, several hours, to really open up. It depends on the wine. If you're going to open a bottle of '82 Chateau Latour, you'll probably want to allow for some breathing time - and you'll also want to remember to invite me over. <g> However, the older the wine, the less time it is likely to need. For a wine like Newton, which was designed to be ready to drink on release (though it does benefit from some aging) 25 years amounts to senior citizen status, and there is the possibility it will fade quickly. If it does need more air time, you can always let it sit in the glass for a few minutes, but once it fades it probably isn't going to come back. Decanting in advance to eliminate the sediment problem is not a horrible idea, though you do run the risk of missing the best the wine has to offer. I like even better Thomas's idea of leaving it at the restaurant a couple of days ahead of time. Apropos to nothing, I did decant a bottle of '85 Port last Saturday morning. I finished it last night, and it was still going strong. But Port is a different animal.

To: Peter V who wrote (1045)	12/31/2009 3:46:40 PM
From: Thomas Mercer-Hursh	Respond to of 1277

Is my thinking outdated? Depends on the wine. Recent vintages often will benefit from decanting and swirling. I've seen George Riedel run a wine though a process that seemed like he should be using power tools! But, an older wine will fade with too much air. Think of what happens to an open bottle ... on some rare occasions when there is something left over. Sometimes, it can taste better the second day, but leave it long enough and it will get lifeless and flat. An aged wine is going along a similar curve during the aging process and is farther along. How much is right is something the depends on the specific bottle and your personal tastes. Me, I like observing how the wine develops after opening and I've been disappointed in wines opened too far in advance because I missed the part where I would have liked them best. At the same time, my tasting group did a tasting some years ago of young Napa cabs in which they had a pair of each bottle. One was opened the night before, decanted, and then returned to the bottle and sealed. The other was opened right before the tasting. Absolutely across the board the group voted the previously opened bottle higher than the just opened bottle ... but, they also voted maker over maker as more important than when the bottle was opened. But, these were young wines.