Wines and SpiritsTips for letting your wine breathe
A bottle of wine is like a room that has not been aired for years; a live organism that needs to breathe in order to achieve its complex flavor. Wine connoisseurs know that letting a wine breathe is one of the important features of wine appreciation.
Dry red wines, especially the vintage ones, are the ones that really need to breathe because they are long aged before serving. Red wines contain high amounts of tannins that come from the grape skin after the fermentation process. By being exposed to air and mingling with oxygen, their tannins are softened up and their aromas are released. After aeration, their flavor profile becomes smoother and mellower and their flavor characteristics are intensified and improved.
Many people are under the wrong impression that simply uncorking a bottle of wine and letting it to sit for a while is enough to aerate it. In fact, this is meaningless simply because the wine needs space to breathe. Typically, either a glass or a decanter would do. The wine needs sufficient amounts of air to mingle with, in a larger surface area than the narrow top of the bottle.
Usually, people pour the wine in a glass and let it sit for 15 to 20 minutes. If you do that, make sure the pour covers at least six inches from the angle of the bottle to the glass. In that way, you give sufficient air into the wine. Also, donò€™t forget to swirl it every 30 seconds so that it better mingles with the air.
In most of the cases, people use a decanter, which is an elegant, long-necked glass vessel with a wide-bottom surface area that allows more air to interact with the wine. Remove the cork carefully; clean the neck and mouth of the bottle with a towel; illuminate the sediment at the bottom of the bottle with a candle; hold the neck of the bottle close to the candlelight; start pouring the wine into the decanter with steady, careful movements.Ò
Not all wines need to breathe and some explicitly need not. Some wines mature naturally with the oxygen that is contained in the bottle. Hence, the first and the most important step in the process, is to make sure you have a wine that actually needs to breathe.
A dry red wine can sit for 15 to 20 minutes before serving to improve its taste with the air exposure. Younger red wines with higher tannin levels would take about an hour to aerate before serving. In contrast, white wines, in majority, do not need exposure to the air to intensify their taste. Also, mature wines, about 40 years or older, can lose their flavors with exposure to air.
As much as wine needs the air, too much exposure to air may cause it to oxidize. Wine oxidation is a series of slight chemical changes that disrupt the balance of wine affecting its flavors and texture. Ideally, a bottle should be consumed within five days of opening maximum, unless you can pump the air out with some device.