Transcript: EP 13: The Winemakers Guide to Decanting

- [Jesse] It's gonna get loud and violent here for a little while. Don't call the cops.

- Hi, I'm Jesse Inman. And this is another installment of "Cellar Rats Into Seller Rats."

- I'm Aaron Inman. And I have a long drawl when I say my name.

- I do not know where that's coming from. So if you're curious about decanting wine, we've got you covered on this episode. Why do you do it, when you do it, who invented it, where do babies come from?

- What do the professionals do? Does it change your wine?

- Yeah.

- Decanting is really just taking a finished wine, a bottled wine, and transferring it vessel to vessel.

- Seems pretty simple.

- It is. At the end of the day, you could do it with a shoe.

- Do the French, when they, when they're racking do they call it decanting or is it only when it's bottled?

- I don't believe they call it decanting. I think it's just racking. Racking is when you, unfinished wine, and you're moving it from one vessel to another. Decanting is when you're moving wine from, finished wine from one vessel to another.

- For example, this wine was in this, this wine was in this bottle, now it's in this, decanted.

- It's pretty complex stuff.

- Yeah. You decante the decanted wine into a decantis.

- Decanting really has three purposes. The main purpose would be aerating the wine. A lot of times we'll do this on a young red wine. That's maybe a little harsh from cannons. It also helped blow off some of the reductive aromas that can develop it in a low oxygen.

- Yeah a lot of wines when you first open them they start off tight and then they end up open. So open is kind of when they're fully the bouquet, the nose is it full capacity? You can aerate things too long. And that's what your mom may have had the fridge. And maybe you snuck in there and drank a few swigs now and again.

- And you were like wine sucks.

- Yeah, that was my first exposure to wine and it was like ugh!

- You've got removing sediment from older wine usually older wine say 10, 15, 20 years

- Especially heavier wine.

- And we're talking mainly red wines with a lot of tannins that are built to age because the tannins are an anti-oxidant and it can it can help it have longevity in the bottle. Well, they'll start to bind up over time and fall out and become sediment. And so you want to remove that from your, your bottle because it actually just makes drinking the wine a little unpleasant

- Yeah it's not the end of the world. It's just unfortunate to have a bunch of crap at the bottom of your glass and you pour another one and you get more crap in there.

- On the older wines that you're removing the sediment from you have to be really careful because the exposure to oxygen can rob those over their life within like 20 minutes

- Yeah, I've had wines where you open them up and within 20, 30 minutes, you're like, it's dead. But it was really, they they kind of do this and then they do this. I mean, all wines do that in the bottle out of the bottle, but older wines tend to do it faster.

- And that's one of the cool things about wine is they're kind of like a little time capsule in a lot of ways. Whereas, you know, I don't feel the same way with other like alcohols that wine kind of has this time capsule component and the older, the wine the faster it fades once it's open. So you want to drink that thing pretty quick.

- Yeah.

- So outside of aerating the wine and removing the sediment there's also wine preservation, like in our wine hacks our first wine hacks, which was amazing. Thank you for all the feedback subscribers.

- Thank you, mom.

- Is when we use the small woozy bottle to pour a single size, a single serving option into a small

- Basically just removing the wine from oxygen by putting it into a tighter vessel.

- Yeah. Otherwise known as my bedroom.

- You don't decant white wines as much, you can. Because the main reasons we were talking about decanting wine is to aerate it. A lot of times you're talking about harsher younger red wines, that are seller worthy. So maybe 3 to 10 years is kind of the range from from when they were bottled.

- Yeah.

- And you might want to open those up a little bit. You don't have the same tannin structures in white wines. I mean, you can do some skin fermented whites and things like that. But overall generally you don't, you don't need to. And white wine, the other thing that you want to be careful with the decanting them, because actually a lot of the fruit aromas, the volatiles they blow off really quick, and so if you decant a white wine you can kill the freshly aroma.

- So today we've decided to show you three different methods I guess three, three different wines two different methods, same wine. This is a control. So this is just a bottle that's been popped with no decanting no aeration. This, this one here has been in the decanter here for three hours, three or four hours. So it should be really just about prime time when it comes to a young, is this cab?

- It's Cab

- Where the third wine will be put into a Ninja.

- A blender.

- And, you know, get some air and we'll see how it holds up.

- We chose to taste in 2018 Paso Robles cab from Daou vineyards. And the main reason we chose it is because Cabernet is one of the heavier more tannic wines.

- Big, fruity, bold.

- And this is a younger wine. So it definitely would benefit from some opening. Some aging, some decanting. And the other reason we chose this particular wine is because it's, it's 30, under $30. I think they've, they retail it for $30 on their website but we picked it up for like $26. Now these guys are a little bit fancier than we are. It's also two brothers that started a winery down in Paso in the late nineties.

- I like them already.

- They have a little bit of cash.

- I don't like them.

- So they, they make wines that are a little bit this is their entry level. They make wines all the way up to $75, $80, $90 a bottle. We've never had their wines before. We've definitely heard of this brand before. So that was also another reason we picked it is like give it a little bit of it.

- Yeah, try something else.

- A sample. Right. So as people do we'll just pour this into our blender.

- Bill Nye the science guy.

- We're using a Ninja 6,700. If you're looking for sponsorships.

- Is it really the 6,700?

- No, I made that up but let's just put this on here for safety. All right. Now this is my first time blending wine. So let's see.

- You just got to follow your heart.

- And we're going to go ahead and do this for what? 15 seconds?

- I'd say 30 seconds.

- 30 seconds. It's going to get loud and violent here for a little while. Don't call the cops.

- That's probably good. It looks like a smoothie. That's probably like plenty.

- That is pretty aerated .

- Again, these are the same wine. So it's going to be pretty subtle. The differences between these I would imagine. Maybe the Ninja one, cause it did get beat up pretty good, but this is a one, two and three. So we'll taste them in that order and we'll--

- We're doing it blind. So we'll see. Tastier.

- Wish I had a hat.

- Okay, one.

- Okay, uno.

- Smells good. Kinda smells like cab.

- Prickly, when having never tried this wine before it's hard to say what's different about it.

- It's got like good kind of raspberry is a little bit of like kind of chocolatey notes. This one has a lot more red fruit.

- And it's comes off a little bit. It's still got lots of tannin but it's more kind of integrated and more soft. Kind of fits in the palate a little bit. Not so chunky.

- Yeah. It's rounder and a little softer.

- This one smells like a Ninja. Just kidding.

- Hmm.

- And number three, here has a little bit more of that kind of like olive.

- I almost would say, this is the control. This is the decanter. And this is the Ninja. Because this one seems to come off softer.

- I actually think that the number two is the Ninja, just because of how open the fruit is. And I think that number three here might actually be the control just because it's got more of that earthy kind of olive. The fruits more like currents and it's a little more reserved

- I think ones control, final answer.

- And I think, I think number one could be the decant. God this is hard work, but somebody's got to do it for the people. I'm going to say that, I'm going to say that one is the control. Two is the Ninja. And three is the decanted.

- I'm the same, but the last two are flipped. Just to, just to clarify here, we've got the answers from Simone. One was the decanter two was the control and three was the Ninja. So the only one that that got, I picked Ninja but just cause it was softer. I, Aaron made a good point off camera that maybe you don't need to decant this wine. It's pretty Tutti Frutti.

- A lot of wines don't need to be decanted. That's one thing that maybe we didn't say it in the beginning. A lot of wines don't need to be decanted. And a lot of times you give up some of that fruit when you do decant.

- Sure.

- And so this one, number two ended up being the the control, the non decanted wine or non-blended wine. And I think it had the most it was the most expressive and the most fruit forward.

- Well, cause here's the other thing too. Pour the wine in your glass. Talk to somebody for about 10 minutes. And you just decanted your wine.

- That's true.

- Yeah. So just don't drink so damn fast.

- So interesting.

- Yeah. It's super for me, decanting is mostly, I just don't like drinking wine with a bunch of sediment at the bottom. So if it's an old wine, we'll just throw it in a decanter. And then it is kind of the experience. It looks, it looks fun, it feels fun.

- And a lot of, a lot of drinking wine can be that little, like extra something with a meal, extra something with friends. It's not like you're necessarily always looking for maximum utility, Hacks can help you out. And, and there's probably certain wines that really, decanting them is gonna greatly impact your experience at drinking them. Say an old wine with a lot of sediment where you don't want that gritty mouthfeel. But at the end of the day, there's a lot of wines that you do not need to decant. Just like less than 3% of all wines actually need to be seller aged. They're ready to go right on release.

- Yeah something about 98% of wines or 95% percent of wines are a drink within the first 24 or 48 hours. And I think 65% of stats are made up on the fly.

- Yeah. And the reality is that's one of the misconceptions about wine is that all wines are meant to be aged. And they're really not. A lot of them are meant to be consumed, you know, fairly, fairly readily. This is a 2018 cab. Pretty damn approachable.

- Yeah. I think it's ready to go.

- Tasty. I think they did a good job for we bought this for like $26. I think their website has it for $30. Super tasty effort.

- Yeah. I guess in summazation

- In conclusion, the wine's good. Decanting, if it's, if it suits your fancy go for it. Not necessarily the most epic change in things we've ever seen.

- Yeah. It wasn't. I think we're just a little more-- I'm just mainly surprised that the most open and fruit forward wine here was the control. That's interesting to me, but none of these wines tasted bad the decanted wine is also good. It just doesn't have as much of that fruit pop.

- Yeah. Now that we've done all the work for you.

- You're welcome.

- If you'll give us a like and subscribe, I don't know why I guess it may be because you like it and want to see some more. Other than that, I wouldn't do it.

- Well, we're also very, very sensitive.

- Yeah. I am a Egomaniac. I actually suck myself. I suck my thumb and cry myself to sleep on a nightly basis.

- There's no way we could be clean winemakers because of all the criticism we would get.

- Yeah, for sure. So thank you for joining us on the second edition of wine hacks and we will catch you on the next episode.

- See you on the next episode.

- Bye-Bye.