When to decant a wine?

Justine Knapp | 5/31/25, 5:00 PM

Most wines would benefit from decanting before drinking. Here's how.

First of all, you need to taste the wine. Does it need air? That's often where things get tricky. How can you tell?

Decanting isn't just for old wines; on the contrary, a big breath of air could even upset them. For bottles aged in the cellar, the term decanting is used. If it's not too fragile, the wine is poured into a container to separate it from its deposit (tannic residue). An old wine is decanted, while a young or intense wine is decanted.

Air to soften

Why put a wine in contact with air when it's young? To release its shy aromatics (few aromas are perceptible on the nose) or make it more supple (the wine seems compact, its tannins, alcohol or acidity attack the mouth).

Both reds and whites, especially full-bodied, powerful whites. aged in porous barrels, they need time to reveal their complexity after several months in their hermetically sealed bottles.

Decanting can also be beneficial to a reduced cuvée. To detect this unpleasantness, there's no doubt that the wine smells of cabbage and rotten eggs. Decanting dissipates some of the aromatic sulfur compounds responsible for the smell.

The larger the surface area of the decanter, the more these aeration and oxidation phenomena will be accentuated. The wine warms up in the decanter, which should be kept cool if necessary.

Practical tips

The first tip is to ask your wine merchant, who is likely to be familiar with the cuvée and its vagaries, for advice on the decanting time required to appreciate it.

On your own, if you feel that the wine is not ready, but you don't want to wait (half an hour to three hours in a decanter, depending on the consistency of the wine), place it in the refrigerator, re-sealed for the next day, and open another bottle.

If you're not sure but you're curious, keep half the bottle in the fridge, corked, and taste it again the next day to see how it develops.

Better still, get ahead of the game. at lunchtime for dinner, for example, open the bottle by half a glass, recork and place in the fridge. Unless it's a really fragile wine, this gentle aeration will help to prepare the wine and keep the prospect of decanting at bay.

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