Why you should decanterize your wine

The decanter is a red wine's best friend. A decanter, for those of you that don't know, is a vase-like container that red wine is usually poured into. The better decanters usually have a very wide base followed by a narrow opening.

So what is the purpose of a decanter? Well, you normally see people swirling the shit out of red wine in their glasses. The purpose of this is to "oxygenate" or "open up" the wine. Wines that have been sitting for a few years in a bottle tend to be tight at first (hence the swirling, and pouring very small tastes at first as to oxygenate the wine). When oxygen is thrown into the equation, much of the tightness goes away contributing to the overall smoothness and taste of the wine. Oxygen "completes" the wine making process, and helps with the "polymerization" of the complex sugars found in wine. (yeah, i know, I lifted that off some other paper :P)

So how do you decanter a wine? Basically you pour the entire bottle into the decanter (unless you have a jankey one like RIch had, then you pour maybe 1/3 of it) Make sure you dont pour it in like it's a glass of grape juice, slowing pour over the neck of the decanter, as it "water falls" or cascades into the base. This way, all the wine gets exposed to the oxygen.

Another good oxygenation technique- another good idea to do for a nice bottle of red, is open your wine (and decanter it if you have one) maybe 30 or so minutes before you drink it (longer if the bottle is older) this is a trick i picked up from my dad, it really cleans up the taste and that sucker becomes crazy smooth. Another cool trick is to freeze the bottle for a few minutes- just to give it that straight out of the cellar chill. Freezing the wine for a few minutes freezes up the acids in the wine, and brings down the acidity, giving it a much smoother taste. If you are lucky enough to have a mini wine fridge, this isn't a necessary step, because you typically store it at below room temperature, which does the trick.

A decanter is probably the single most thing you can do to greatly enhance the wine drinking experience. If you are serious about red wine, I would suggest that you go out and pick one of these suckers up. Just dont expect a bottle of 2 buck chuck to turn into a 97' Caymus Special Select (probably my fav wine by the way :P)