The Decanting Trick That Will Improve Your Wine Rapidly

Yes, decanting wine could make or break your next glass, but the process itself may take more time than you have. If you've ever found yourself in this situation, home coffee expert and former sommelier, the founder of Decoding Wine, Mathew Woodburn-Simmonds, spoke to us at Food Republic about his preferred method for speeding up the decanting process without sacrificing any of its benefits. 

"You can double decant, decant into a decanter, clean out the bottle, then decant back into the original bottle," Woodburn-Simmonds stated. Compared to decanting wine a single time, this method increases its exposure to oxygen as it's passed back and forth between bottle and decanter. Since Woodburn-Simmonds recommends cleaning out the bottle before returning the wine to it, double decanting has the added benefit of more thoroughly removing sediment from older vintages. It's particularly well-suited for full-bodied reds above 13% alcohol, like Bordeauxs, as these typically get the most benefit from aeration. You can also use a tool to get more air into your wine.

"There are 100 little gadgets designed to do this, [yet I'm] not convinced that many of them help, but some do speed the process up a little," Woodburn-Simmonds noted. While the gadgets themselves are in question, he points out that there are some tried and true tools that can help you rapidly decant and improve your wine.

When it comes to decanting tools, there are two that reign supreme: the decanter itself and the funnel. Both require no prior knowledge on how to use them and excellently accomplish the task of aerating wine faster, thanks to simply increasing the wine's exposure to oxygen.

"You can use wider-bottomed decanters with more air exposure," Mathew Woodburn-Simmonds told us. Since full-bodied wines require a bit more decanting time, any vessel designed to hold more oxygen where the wine pools reduces the amount of time they need to breathe. They increase the surface area contact between the wine and the air, speeding up the process compared to slimmer containers. Whatever shape of decanter you decide to use, avoid using soap to clean stained wine decanters as it can leave a residue that interferes with the flavor of the next bottle.

"You can try various funnels that help aerate the wine," noted Woodburn-Simmonds. The slower pour from a funnel increases the wine's exposure to oxygen, jumpstarting the aeration process before it decants. These are particularly useful if you need to decant wine without a decanter and, when combined with Woodburn-Simmonds' double decant method, achieve a similar speed of results compared to using an expensive decanter.