Spanked

We laid out a step-by-step protocol for this experiment.

Open Bottle #1 early in the day.
Open Bottle #2 right before tasting.
Taste Bottle #1 against Bottle #2, blind.
Decant half of Bottle #2 into a standard decanter.
Pour other half into a Waring Blender and froth for 1 minute.
Taste decanted and "vigorously decanted" wines against Bottle #1, blind.

We used one of our favorite gateway ungrafteds for the test. The Root:1 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon. The Root:1 series includes several wines, red and white. I've found them all to be terrific values. And while they are not "great" wines, they are certainly approachable, affordable examples of the positive attributes of wine produced from own-rooted vines.

I won't bore you with an account of every note for each individual taste because there wasn't much differentiation. There were subtle differences, but nothing experimentally exciting.

But there were two important take-aways:

1. Blending your wine isn't good for bouquet, but did surprisingly little damage otherwise (there's a 10 second time-lapse between each photo, just fyi).

2. Decanting for aeration produces about the same result as just opening the bottle and exposing the shoulder.

It's also worth noting than an hour after the experiment, I couldn't tell the difference between any of the wines.

Me and My Decanter

This comment:

"I personally find decanting, vigorous or otherwise, generally unnecessary"

...in our most recent commentary, sparked a fair amount of correspondence, and a comment from Ned.

So allow me to qualify my meaning.

I don't drink much 30 year old Claret. I do drink a fair amount of Champagne. I tend to drink more white wine than red. This is because I tend to eat more fish and chicken than beef and wild game. So for me, decanting is generally unnecessary. I suspect, gentle reader, that you were looking for something with more implied controversy.

Something like: I think decanting is largely a showy bit of theater that doesn't improve a wine to any greater degree than just opening it, pouring off a taste and letting it sit.

As it happens, I think that's true as well.

Generally.


Blender results up next.