Hi, I’m Andre from OYA Restaurant and Lounge in Washington, D.C. and today we’re discussing tips from a Sommelier.
In this clip, I’m going to show how to decant a bottle of red wine. You might be wondering, what is decanting? Decanting is a process used to either separate older wines from any sediment that might be formed in the bottles. These are wines that would be maybe 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 years old. It’s also used to array younger wines so that they’re more aromatic and flavorful.
Before we get started, there’s a few thing that you’ll need. Of course, you’ll need your corkscrew with knife so that you can open the wine. You’ll need a glass decanter. I have two here. This is a very standard decanter. It’s not very exciting whereas this is a very nice crystal swan decanter that I prefer to use because I like the handle as it’s easier to pour. This one is a little awkward to pour especially if your hands are small and you may not have stronger arms. I also have over here a glass of everyday wine and this could be your favorite cooking wine for instance, or your favorite wine to drink after a long day of work.
This is important because we’re going to need to season the decanter before we use it because we never know how much dust, any sediment, soap suds that might be in here. So we’re going to use this glass of wine to clean out the decanter. Never pour water in the decanter before you’re about to use it because you do not want to mix water with your wine especially if you’re pouring in a very expensive bottle of wine.
Also one other thing, I have a candle. The candles are important because depending on the lighting situation in the room that you’re using, here in the restaurant it’s often kind of dark and difficult to see if there’s any sediment in the bottles. So while pouring the wine into the decanter, if you have an older bottle and you expect some sediment, a candle is a great way to see through the wine to see if there’s any sediment. So let’s get started and season our decanter with the red wine that we have here.
Let’s just go ahead and pour that in. This one you got to be get a little careful not to spill it out but you want to very carefully just turn it around so that it gets on most of the surfaces and then you’re just going to pour right back out. Alright, perfect.
Now, we’re going to go ahead and open the bottle. This is a young wine. So, I’m not going to necessarily need to use the candle but I’m going to show you how you would place it. So we get the foil off. You want to make sure when you’re opening a bottle of older wine because the corks can be very fragile and the last thing you want to do is have a crumble into the wine. We don’t have a problem with that here so this is a very young wine. So, we’re ready to go ahead and pour into the decanter.
Again, I'm going to show how you would position your candle. You would want to get it very close to the neck to the bottle if you had an older wine that you’re worried about having any sediment and you just go ahead and pour.
Now if you have an older wine, you’re going to want to pour slowly, very slow so that if there is any sediment you’re going to catch it before it gets into decanter. Now, for decanting a younger wine that you want it to open up to breathe, then you can do a little quicker because you’re not worried about any sediment.
Now, again if we were doing an older bottle, we would really be watching now because we’re getting close to the bottom. Usually it’s about the last ounce and a half of wine that might have some sediment. It really depends and if you did see some sediment, you’re going to stop decanting at that point and just set that wine aside. So, there you go how to decant a bottle of red wine.
Stay tune for my next clip where I’ll show you how to store wine.
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