Decanting Wine

Essential Tips on Wine - How to have a little fun Decanting & Aerating Your Wines

We'd like to tell you about the best way to get the most out of your wine, and how to truly enjoy your wine-drinking! One of the best ways to enhance the flavour of your wines is to decant them beforehand - and to prove it, I'd like you to undertake a simple experiment, for which you will require three bottles of the same wine.

1. Take the first bottle and pour the wine into a decanter around two to three hours before you plan to drink it.

2. Take the second bottle and remove the cork between two and three hours before you plan to drink it, but do not decant it.

3. Open the third bottle when you're ready to start the experiment.

4. Pour a little (or a lot if you prefer!) wine from each container into three separate glasses. Put on a blindfold and ask a friend to hand you each of the glasses in turn. Ask your friend to remember the order and the source of the wine in each glass and then simply say which you preferred - number one, two or three. Let your friend reveal the source of your first, second and third preferences - and chances are highly likely that your first choice will be number one, above, followed by number 2 and number three - in that order!

You can then decide how you will serve your wine in future.

There you have it - a scientific result confirmed by your taste-buds! By the way, this experiment applies just as much for White Wines, although the results are sometimes less obvious than with Red Wines.

As ever, we are here to answer any questions and look forward to hearing the results of your test!