Best way for wine to breathe 1

[athomas236]

I have been having a long time discussion with friends about the best way for wine to breathe. They say take the cork out and let it stand for one hour. I think that wine will breathe better in a glass but mine would never stand for one hour.

To my way of thinking leaving wine in the bottle means the empty volume just gets saturated with vapours and then it stops breathing. In a glass the natural circulation of air keeps changing the vapours so the wine keeps breathing.

Any ideas about this technical matter will be appreciated.


athomas236

 

[Montemayor]

athomas236:

I've had the pleasure and opportunities to taste some of the most admired and expensive wines in both sides of the Atlantic ocean that a world-scale project's budget could endure and I maintain that the only wine expert to respect is your own taste buds.

I simply have never had anyone prove to me that so-called "breathing" makes any difference to a wine that is worthwhile drinking or, much less, discussing. My experience has been that once the cork is popped, the good wines reveal themselves directly. They need no stimulation, additives, adjectives or, worse, hesitation. I don't enjoy a wine through my nostrils as I do through my mouth; and my taste buds, to my satisfaction, have never let me down.

A good wine is like a good woman: the more you enjoy them, the better off you are; the more you discuss them and air them, the more frailties and faults you'll find.

I hate to depart from such an interesting, technical, and serious subject matter but I have a young and unbruised bottle of Beaujolais that clamors attention.

Art Montemayor
Spring, TX

 

[alexit]

According to my Wine Spectator magazine, (for red wines) a crystal decanter that maximizes the surface area of the air-wine interface is preferred, this decanter is not completely sealed from air exchange by the crystal stopper so there is always a exchange from outside into the decanter. Decant for 24 hours before serving.

Wine bottled will last many years, wine stored in the decanter will sour much more quickly (on the order of weeks)...

 

[EdStainless]

Yes, there will still be the mass transport driven by the concentration gradients to cause some ongoing 'breathing'.
However I am firmly with Monte on this. Even though some wines do change character as they breath, it is not as if they are undrikable at first, or 'better' later.
I like tasting the entire progression.
The only time that I would decant a wine is if it had a lot of sediment that I wanted to filter. Even then, if it is just for me I can drink around the mud.

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Corrosion never sleeps, but it can be managed.

http://www.trenttube.com/Trent/tech_form.htm

 

[notnats]

Some years ago I opened some "special" reds that I had kept for about 10 years. The first one tasted like vinegar and I poured it down the sink. The second one was the same but I kept it to share my disappointment with a friend who was coming for dinner.

After it had been open for 2-3 hours we re-sampled it and it was splendid. Naturally we cried for the one down the sink.

I believe that old wines need to breathe either to get rid of volatile compounds, or to oxidise some unpleasant compounds. In the bottle seems to work.

Bottoms up

Jeff

 

[ivymike]

I recently received a bottle of a recent vintage from a friend who worked with the wine industry in CA. I regarded this bottle with great skepticism, as it contained a blend of more than one type of wine, and had been riding around in a delivery truck for who-knows-how-long en route to my house. Nonetheless, I finally got the courage to open it up and try it. The first glass was about as bad as I was expecting, but subsequent glasses were not nearly as bad. Much of the vinegary flavor of the first glass had gone away by the time I tasted the second one. I didn't finish the bottle, though...

Perhaps beginning the evening with a couple of shots of vodka would have made even the first glass taste acceptable?

 

[EdStainless]

InH, don't slam blended wines. Some of the best wines out there are made that way. Of course there are also bad ones.

If I open a bottle and the wine smells hot or sharp I will pour a small glass and let it stand 30min or so. If I don't like it then I won't bother with it. But it is amazing what happens in the first few minutes with some wines.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Corrosion never sleeps, but it can be managed.

http://www.trenttube.com/Trent/tech_form.htm

 

[athomas236]

I'm a fan of "new world" wines and have never noticed any change by letting them breathe. Maybe three years of vodka drinking in Poland have deadened my taste buds.

athomas236

 

[friartuck]

Wines taste better when left. The absorbed gases disperse and give a better taste.

Friar Tuck of Sherwood

 

[rmw]

To address one of the technical questions asked in the original post, as a hard core ME, I have had to have some ChemE concepts, like diffusion pounded into my skull. So, if I learned anything, I would think that the vapors, etc., (whatever they are) in the bottle above the wine liquid level would diffuse into the atmosphere around the bottle, at a rate determined by the concentration gradient(s) as would the atomsphere around the bottle back into the bottle.

The question to be answered by some ChemE smarter than me is whether the reduced flow area of the bottle neck, as compared to the relatively open area of a typical wine glass would impede the change in " concentration gradients," or the "mass transport" rates.

It is a question any decent engineer would want to know (at least before the vodka kicked in).

rmw

 

[athomas236]

RMW

You have summarised the question well

athomas236