decantering

[Innkeeper]

Hi Moody, and welcome to the Wine Board. Decanting is pouring a bottle of wine into another vessel, commonly called a decanter. It is done basically for two reasons. The first is aerate a young red wine. This is done with gusto (we call it the glug glug method). The purpose is to get the normal enemy of wine, oxygen, into the wine to fully expose it to you and the world; and/or to hasten the approachability of the wine. The second reason is to very carefully separate an aged out wine from its sediment. It is also possible that a younger wine with throw some noxious sediment. You do this very slowly and attentively so you catch the sediment it the area below the neck of the bottle and get clear liquid into the decanter. There is such a thing as a decanting funnel that makes this process a little easier.