There’s indeed a lot of ritual associated with wine, and the subject of breathing and decanting red wine is as ritualistic as wine can get! However, in this case there’s a lot of science and reason behind the process, which is simply designed to give you more pleasure from your bottles of wine. As wines increase in age, so must the care you take in presenting them. To do full justice to a mature red wine, leave the bottle upright for several hours to encourage any sediment or deposit to settle at the bottom. Breathing encourages two simultaneous responses. Firstly, an old wine may contain some slightly pungent or ‘off’ characters which can dissipate into the atmosphere and out of the wine. I wouldn’t suggest that it is possible to remove all smells in this manner, but the bouquet can certainly be ‘cleaned up’ through a spell of breathing. The second thing that happens is that oxygen is able to get to the wine, and through a slight oxidation process is able to sharpen the edge on many of its flavours, enhancing their attraction and depth. So, as a wine breathes it improves with the loss of undesirable flavours, and the ‘winey’ flavours are made more apparent to the drinker. You do it simply by leaving the wine open for a period prior to drinking – in a decanter. It’s not sufficient, though, just to leave a bottle standing there with its cork out. The surface area of the exposed wine in the bottle is simply far too small to permit anything other than minuscule evaporation and dissolving of oxygen, especially when compared to the comparatively broad expanse of wine’s surface inside a decanter. By decanting you immediately and comparatively gently aerate the wine, thereby reducing the time required for it to breathe to its most drinkable degree. It is also possible to accelerate the breathing process in younger and more robust wines, which, being more resilient, are acceptably able to submit to a harsher treatment. By pouring them alternately from one decanter or carafe to another, you thereby impose a gentle, extended and effective process of aeration. Without suggesting that oxidation is good for wine, some aeration certainly can lift the flavours present. There is however a danger with old wine. If you breathe it for too long, it can rapidly oxidise and deteriorate, losing its remaining qualities of flavour. So you need to balance one outcome against the other. Never leave old wines (twenty years of age and more) to breathe for two or three hours or more. Old wines should be opened around half an hour before they are ready to be drunk. Once opened, immediately sniff the top of the bottle. If it smells sweet and fragrant, the cork should be re-inserted (the same way as before), or if this is not possible, then a clean cork should be inserted instead. These wines will not require that half-hour’s breathing. However, the wine may be closed or else reveal some bottle stink (the undesirable flavours mentioned previously), in which case it should immediately be decanted into a carafe, decanter or claret jug. All old wines, including those that do not require the extended breathing before drinking, need decanting before serving. And how to do that is perhaps the subject of another column. The rules of thumb are these: young reds generally need longer to breathe than old ones, and full-bodied reds need longer than more delicate wines. A long period of breathing is around three hours; a short period about fifteen minutes. Therefore, give a full-bodied young wine the full three hours, and delicate older, ones about fifteen minutes or more, depending on how they smell when opened. Interestingly, some older wood-aged chardonnays from Burgundy and elsewhere can also appreciate a short period of breathing.
