Taking a bottle of wine out of your cellar and opening it is not always enough.
To allow the wine to take on its full potential and impress your friends with a bottle found at Oé , there are a few rules to know.
Need air?
Organic wines, especially reds, deserve good aeration. Uncorking a few hours before allows to awaken the aromas and especially to gently prepare the wine to change container. If you have time, count an opening between two and four hours before the service.
For the express method, there are also many aerator accessories on the market. This does not replace real aeration, however excellent results can be obtained, especially on easy wines.
To decant or not to decant, that is the question.
Decanting a wine has a very precise function: to improve a young wine,
not very expressive on the nose, which can be slightly drying on the palate,
which we will qualify as “closed”. In the world of wine, there are two schools,
those who decant, those who do not decant. Decanting has the advantage of obtaining faster results than simple aeration! To do this, it is gently poured into a wide-bottomed carafe, to allow oxygenation and release the aromas. This operation should preferably be carried out a few hours before the service.
If you have an old wine, then you will have to proceed in different stages.
First, the bottle is placed in a vertical position for at least 24 hours so that the deposit slowly falls to the bottom. When opening, check that the cork is not damaged (strong smell of cork, mold, etc.). If at the first tasting the nose is closed, the aromas are not very developed but it seems to still have body in the mouth, we decant. A narrow carafe is preferred, where the wine is slid very gently, taking care to monitor the deposit at the bottom. Be careful, we proceed to the transfer just before the tasting because decanted too early it could lose all its aromas definitively.
And my open bottle then?
The evening has just ended. The music is still playing, the guests have just left and when it's time to clear the table you realize that the last open bottle is not finished... If a night tasting does not tempt you, you do not have to throw your wine, quite the contrary! Well preserved, a quality wine will keep for a few days and may even reserve any surprises in its evolution.
But for that, it is absolutely necessary to protect the wine from oxidation and odours. Either by partly closing the bottle with its original cap, or ideally, by using a vacuum pump cap.
Then, we put it back in its refrigerated cellar or in the fridge in the bottle compartment.
