Cool Tip: To Breathe or not to Breathe, that is the Question...
- Jun 23, 2015
© Bill Abbott
Actually there are two questions when it comes to wine breathing: the first is "whether" and the second is "how".
The answer to the question of "whether" is: “it depends” ... remember, we both were lawyers in past lives!
First a little explanation, which many of you already know: wine ages and changes in the bottle. The reason to buy wine and let it sit in a cool quiet place for a while (sometimes several years) is to allow that aging process to happen, making the wine better to drink. But if you don’t cellar your wine, you can achieve some of the benefits of aging, by letting the wine “breathe” before serving. The reason to let a wine breathe is to expose it to air so that the oxygen “ages” the wine, softening the potentially young and sometimes bitter parts of the wine (the tannins), and bringing out the aromas and flavors of a wine. A young wine is sometimes referred to as “tight”, which means that its aromas and flavors haven’t developed.
So the first question to ask yourself is, does the wine need some aging? And the answer is often a guess. The other side of the coin is that the longer the wine is exposed to air, the more the “aging” process turns into deterioration. So an older delicate wine may start going downhill if it’s exposed to air too long before you’re ready to drink it.
Now we’ve given you some guidance, but by no means an answer to “whether”. It really is a bottle-by-bottle decision.
Let’s talk about “how”. First let’s dispel one myth: merely pulling the cork from a bottle of wine doesn’t give it a chance to breathe. Think about the neck of the bottle--by pulling the cork, you are exposing an approximate surface area of 1.5 square inches to air--not a lot of air/wine contact!
So you have two basic choices for letting a wine “breathe”:
First a little explanation, which many of you already know: wine ages and changes in the bottle. The reason to buy wine and let it sit in a cool quiet place for a while (sometimes several years) is to allow that aging process to happen, making the wine better to drink. But if you don’t cellar your wine, you can achieve some of the benefits of aging, by letting the wine “breathe” before serving. The reason to let a wine breathe is to expose it to air so that the oxygen “ages” the wine, softening the potentially young and sometimes bitter parts of the wine (the tannins), and bringing out the aromas and flavors of a wine. A young wine is sometimes referred to as “tight”, which means that its aromas and flavors haven’t developed.
So the first question to ask yourself is, does the wine need some aging? And the answer is often a guess. The other side of the coin is that the longer the wine is exposed to air, the more the “aging” process turns into deterioration. So an older delicate wine may start going downhill if it’s exposed to air too long before you’re ready to drink it.
Now we’ve given you some guidance, but by no means an answer to “whether”. It really is a bottle-by-bottle decision.
Let’s talk about “how”. First let’s dispel one myth: merely pulling the cork from a bottle of wine doesn’t give it a chance to breathe. Think about the neck of the bottle--by pulling the cork, you are exposing an approximate surface area of 1.5 square inches to air--not a lot of air/wine contact!
So you have two basic choices for letting a wine “breathe”:
- Decant it (pouring it from the bottle into a decanter), which will shake it up quite a bit. But remember, as a wine industry friend advises: “you wouldn’t slap your grandmother, so don’t shock an old wine by decanting it!”; or
- Aerate the wine through some type of aerator (like the one here), which introduces air to the wine gently as you pour it into your glass.
