Step 1
of 5
The two reasons to ever decant
Reason 1: Aeration. You want to push oxygen into a young, tight, tannic wine to open it up. The longer the better — within reason.
Reason 2: Sediment. You want to gently separate an old, mature wine from gritty deposit at the bottom. The wine is fragile. The shorter, the better.
These two jobs need different decanters, different timings, opposite mindsets. Confusing them is how a precious 30-year-old Bordeaux ends up overwhelmed by oxygen and dies in twenty minutes.
