Decanting wine

Maybe you have a nice glass carafe at home. Well, you should use it! Old, mature wine as well as young wine will look beautiful in it.

Decanting an older vintage requires a gentler approach. The residues that settle at the bottom of the bottle in aged wine aren’t pleasant. To prevent the residues from making their way into the glass, we gently decant the wine into another container. For this, you will need a smaller carafe with a reduced surface area. Follow these steps:

1. Light a small candle.
2. Grasp the carafe in one hand and the wine in the other, and hold the wine bottle over the candle for decanting so you can better see the residues.
3. Now carefully (!) transfer the wine to the carafe. Make sure the wine doesn’t splash against the bottom of the carafe, but instead softly flows down the neck and into the container.
4. As soon as the residue is all that’s left below the bottleneck: stop!
5. Don’t let the wine sit in the carafe too long – enjoy it right away.

Young wine requires as large a carafe as possible to give the wine a generous surface area. When decanting young wine, you want to bring the wine into contact with as much air as possible; this allows the bouquet to better unfold. Vigorously empty the wine into the carafe to create lots of air bubbles and foam up the wine. Allow the decanted wine to «air» a bit longer.