There is no universal agreement on whether red wine should or should not be decanted.
Most people would not decant, for example, a Cotes-du-Rhone or an inexpensive Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon. Myself would – if only for five to 10 minutes – for the fruit to open, and the tannins to loosen, up.
Wines that have powerful tannins – or where the structure is very upfront – definitely benefit from decanting. This is especially the case if the temperature of the red is cool to cold from, say, having just emerged from a cellar or a wine fridge. When a red is cool to cold, the structure, tannins, and acidity are very accentuated and pronounced. The wine is all tension and closed.
This condition of the wine is really no different from someone put into a very cold room. We not only shiver but very soon become numbed. To come back to life, so to speak, we, literally, need to warm up. Not much different from warming up for a game or sports in order to perform our best.
Bordeaux of a powerful vintage seriously needs decanting.
Vintage 2005 is a prime example. Although 21-year old today, 2005 can be quite bundled up. The sun drenched and tannic vintage is not a subtle or shy number. On the contrary, most Bordeaux 2005 are in-your-face confrontation of concentration.
A few weeks ago, I opened RAUZAN-SEGLA 2005.
The cellar dates from the 14th Century and is the oldest room in the house (everything else is 20thCentury).
The room had been used to house the farm animals at night. It has what I first mistook as a fireplace but is actually a chimney-like facility from which workmen – or the farmer – would drop bales of feed. In winter, the temperature of the cellar is about 11 degrees Celsius.
When decanting, I like to taste the wine straight out of the bottle before I even start to decant it. This way, I can discover how upfront the structure is instead of the fruit (or in some delicate vintages whether the wine may not need any, or perhaps just a short while of, decanting).
The structure of RAUZAN-SEGLA 2005 is a tsunami of tannins. Tough and robust, they need loosening up.
A bottle of wine can teach us many things. Accordingly, every 30 minutes, I re-tasted RAUZAN-SEGLA 2005 and discovered that between 2 1/2 and 3 hours later, the fruit and structure melded perfectly!
The cellar dates from the 14th Century and is the oldest room in the house (everything else is 20thCentury).
