Deciding on the best way to let your wine breathe can be a difficult one.  When I open a bottle of wine, I am ready to relax with my glass of wine. I generally don’t have much patience for allowing it to breathe.Why does wine need to breathe?  By letting your wine breathe or aerate it allows for the full flavors to emerge and make the wine more palatable. While there are many wines that do not need to go through this process, it is good to know the little details that can make a big difference. Here are a few tips to help you enjoy your wine to its fullest potential.

The reason why wines needs to breathe, or age, is because of tannins. Tannins can transfer into wine during the fermentation process from seeds and skins of grapes. They are a natural preservative that diminish overtime allowing fuller flavors to emerge. White wines and some red wines have low levels of these and therefore do not need aging, or periods of breathing, before drinking. Generally all red wines can benefit from aeration, but those that are lighter and fruitier generally don’t require much aeration.

The term breathing refers to the mixing of oxygen with wine allowing the breakdown of tannins. You can bring out fuller flavors of wine by using a decanter to allow the wine to mix with oxygen on a larger scale.

If you choose to allow your wine to breathe, you still have one more decision to make. Do you use a decanter or an aerator? If you have the time, about an hour, then use a decanter. This is plenty of time for your wine to mix with oxygen and for its full flavors to emerge.Pour your bottle of wine, or the portion you want to drink, into the decanter and let it remain there.Surface area is key to the amount of oxygen that can reach the wine; the more area, the sooner you can enjoy it.

If you just opened a bottle of wine five minutes before guests arrived, or you are only wanting to drink a single glass, decantors may not be the best way to aerate your wine.  Aerators serve the same purpose of decanters, but can achieve the same effect in the time it takes you to pour a glass. There are two types, one that you hold over your glass as you pour or ones that you place directly into the bottle and acts as a wine pourer.

The Vinturi red wine aerator allows you to speed up the breathing process by mixing the perfect amount of air for the perfect amount of time to bring out the color, aroma, and flavor of your wines. All you do is pour your glass of wine through the aerator. It comes with a drip free stand so there is no mess to clean up.

The second option, which is more user friendly especially for multi-tasking person, is the Nuance Wine Finer . Pour a perfectly oxygen enhanced glass of wine with this easy to use aerator. After opening your bottle, just place the Wine Finer into the bottle and pour a glass of wine, you will hear “gurgling” noises which is the sound of the wine being aerated. One glass at a time, you can enjoy the full flavors that aerating allows. After pouring, just place to top on the bottle as you would a cork.

So before you decide whether to get yourself a decanter or an aerator, consider your time constraints. Before using the decanter, make sure there is sufficient time for the wine to breath. You can play it safe but allowing your wine to breathe in an instant with a Vinturi or Wine Finer.

Technorati Tags: aerators, breath wines, decantors, red wines, tannins, Vinturi, wine accesories, Wine Finer, wines

This entry was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 11:17 am and is filed under Food and Drink: Wine Spirits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.