Although wrapped in an aura of luxury and sparkle of fine crystal, the process of decanting wine is actually a very simple technique that can enhance the enjoyment of almost any bottle.
I've known that for decades, even though I never spend the small amount of time it takes to do so on the 300-plus bottles I uncork each month in my work for Wine Enthusiast. With decanting getting a lot more attention in recent years on social media sites like TikTok and in popular series like The Gentleman, it seemed like the right time to see if I've been doing it wrong all along.
What is double decanting?
"We decant a lot in the restaurant," explains Tristan Pitre, the wine director at San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito, Calif. "People who eat here usually drink the wine right away, and both white and red wines benefit from that extra air." That includes older wines from the resort's more than 12,000 bottles, including verticals from Petrus and Chateau d'Yquem.
"We certainly decant an older wine, but we do so primarily to remove the sediment," Pitre says. "There are very few things we don't decant." (Reds with natural flavor, for example, are a category that can get murkier with more air.)
Double decanting takes the process to the next level. That's when the wine is aerated and cleared of sediment by pouring it into an initial decanter, then returned to the original bottle, which, at least in restaurants, is usually rinsed of sediment.
While you can use any decanter for this process, there are special products that make it easier, such as the Recanter, which attaches to a wine bottle with a drip-free silicone seal.
"For me, double decanting is about making sure that the wine is served in the best way for the guests, that the wine can breathe while keeping the presentation of the bottle intact," says Travis Padilla, who currently works at Il Buco in Manhattan and double decants more than 100 wines, mostly of larger size, each year during La Festa de Barolo.
He first learned decanting from Yannick Benjamin at Contento in East Harlem and Paul Grieco at Terroir in Tribeca. "For me, it's just another way to be more personal with the guest and build on the story of the wine," he says.
Pitre agrees, even though he doesn't often take the extra step of double decanting at San Ysidro Ranch, unless a guest stays for several days and gets his wine out of the cellar ahead of time.
"You open the wine, it gets some air, and then goes back into the bottle and is poured from the bottle," he said. "Guests like to see that."
When to double decant
During previous jobs in Minneapolis at Demi and Spoon & Sable, Pitre found double decanting crucial when serving tasting menus with wine pairings.
"There you have 90 ml per person, and you don't have the experience to see how the wine opens or changes," he says, compared to letting a wine blossom over time in the bottle or even just in the first decanter. "It has to be good right away. In those situations, we double decant almost every red wine."
Padilla also uses double decanting as a way to introduce a little air, but more slowly, which can be important for older wines that can lose flavor from too much air.
"If not for presentation, I focus on double decanting older wines that may not be over the top yet, but are at the top of the hill with extremely tertiary flavors," he says. "When you pour those into the decanter, the aeration is much faster than I personally like. I feel like those wines need to be aerated more slowly." That's where the more closed limits of the original bottle can help.
As sommelier Amanda McCrossin explains in a recent video for Wine Enthusiast, double decanting can also save time if you serve multiple bottles of wine at home and only have one decanter. "It's one of my favorite party hacks," she said.
Should you double decant (or even hyper decant)?
Those who have seen the popular series Succession know that there is an even more extreme method: putting wine in a blender.
I first experienced this about a decade ago when a good friend of mine in Hollywood threw a young bottle of the acclaimed Bordeaux wine Chateau Pontet-Canet into his blender. I was a bit shocked, but the otherwise very tight wine opened up its aromas quite a bit.
That friend, Greg Jones, a healthcare attorney in Los Angeles, learned about the technique from the techie turned cookbook author Nathan Myhrvold, who turned his knowledge of molecular science into the six-volume Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking.
"He talked about going into restaurants, ordering older red wines and asking the sommelier to put it in a blender," Jones recalled. "He was usually met with disgust." Jones and his wife, criminal lawyer Karen Goldstein, are fans of "big, bold and badass red wines" and thought it would be fun to try.
"We put a Bordeaux in the blender one night, thinking we'd do it for fun," Jones says. "But when we took the top off the blender, the aromas that came out of it were just incredible. They were overwhelming. It's like the nose you get after rolling, but on steroids."
They started using it with all their reds that weren't quite ripe yet. "The joke is that it's pretty fun, too," says Jones, who was surprised when he saw it on Succession. "I remember thinking, 'They stole my idea!
Technically, these wines are double decanted during the process. "When you put a nice wine in the blender to decant, you don't want to put it directly into glasses," Jones says. "We end up double decanting because we're putting the wine back into the bottle."
Padilla says the current trend is to use a milk frother instead. "All sorts of things go into the blender, which can cause a permanent stink," he laughs. "Frothers are a cleaner way. Everyone is using frothers now."
With that in mind, I opened a bottle of 2017 Ashes & Diamonds Bates Ranch, a bit young on the spectrum for Cabernet Sauvignon from the Santa Cruz Mountains. I poured a tasting glass, tried it and then used a frother for the next glass.
Despite our doubts, the sparkling wine (yes it did foam up) was noticeably fruitier and more approachable than the original glass.
Source: wineenthusiast
