Letting It Breathe

[Innkeeper]

It depends a lot on what wine you are dealing with. Restaurants are a paticular problem, because unless they are fancy enough to have a wine steward on premises, you chances of getting a wine decanted are between slim and none. The best bet is to a least let it get poured (which I guess you did) and let it set a spell. From what you wrote, you came pretty close with this one. Of course, it would have been difficult to wait longer.

I decant for aeration almost all red wine. Don't decant Nouveau Beaujolais. How long before eating, again depends on the indiviual wine. It might range from five minutes to five hours. How long depends on what you know from experiance, reading, and pure dumb luck. A year or so ago Drew recommended a 1999 Rosemount Hill of Gold Cabernet. I saw that it was available at South Hemisphere Wine Company, and ordered three. After letting it rest for a couple of weeks after shipment from the Left Coast (resting is another issue), we popped one with a steak. It was as tight as a drum (think Drew likes them that way). Having vowed to leave the other two in the rack for a few years, another situation came up a couple of months later, when we needed a wine like that. So I decanted one four hours before dinner. It was fine. The third one is still in the rack.



[This message has been edited by Innkeeper (edited 12-09-2002).]