I arrived home after work last night and thought well I will have a other glass of the wine. What a transformation! The nose had dropped all hints of oakiness and had become a floral/berry beauty and mouth to had become much rounder and smoother with replays of that same floral berriness, it was absolutely delicious. To say the least I was stunned mainly because at that price point I would never have thought it would improve so much. This experience got me thinking about wine's fascinating relationship with air.
To wine air is both it's best friend and it's worst enemy. After first being opened, wine especially younger ones, need air to truly express themselves. Certain wines, especially if they are well made, can take up to 48 hours if not more of air contact before they have reached their optimum drinking level. However, in the end air will ultimately kill the wine and render it undrinkable. Of course to complicate matters every wine is different. Some wines only need 15-20 minutes of aeration to open up, but some aged and more delicate wines might suffer greatly if exposed to too much air. In fact some wine writer's claim that it isn't necessary to decant wine at all and that just pouring it in your glass and swirling it is sufficient enough.
Personally, I think that wine needs some exposure to air to "open up" and express its full range of aroma's and tastes. I tend to always decant red wines unless I am only having a glass, but I do not really decant whites even though some argue that should be done as well. Obviously I don't decant sparkling wine, but I do prefer them once they have been opened for 20 minutes or so. So perhaps it is really a matter of personal taste as to how much air exposure one likes.
Now as I stated earlier this is all wine dependent. Some wines are very one dimensional and will taste relatively the same from the moment it is opened to hours afterwards. Where other wines will develop over several hours and take on a range of notes. I recall having a 1999 Perrier Jouet Belle Epoque Brut Champagne a couple of years ago that seemed to change every couple of minutes darting from flowers, to stone fruits to minerals and in various continually changing combinations. That bottle was opened for a couple of hours and it seemed to morph every few minutes.
All in all its actually a pretty complicated subject and I haven't even talked about aging wine and the minute exposure to air a bottle closed with a cork receives over time that helps it age. If you would like to read a fascinating article on the subject I would encourage you to read Jamie Goode's piece http://www.wineanorak.com/alternativeclosures.htm . Jamie Goode's website www.wineanorak.com is in my opinion one of the most informative, well written and interesting wine sites around.
I guess the best thing to draw from all this that wine and air is a complex and nuanced subject. I would encourage all of you, however, to try a little experiment. Buy a bottle it doesn't need to be expensive and pour yourself a glass and write down your tasting notes. Put a stopper on it and leave it to the next day and pour yourself another glass and take those notes, continue the trend until the bottle is done and draw your own conclusions. I think you may find the results very interesting and will only better inform all of us of the interesting relationship between wine and air.
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