Opening & Closing Thoughts Part 2

Last week I hurriedly discussed how we can all crack open our favorite wine. (However, I did stay away from the screw top so popular now...especially in Australia.)

So now that we have it opened, what next? We drink it of course! "But wait," someone says. "Don't we need to decant it, let it open-up and breath?" I just happened to open up my latest Wine Spectator to the letter section. There was a good bit of debate over this very question. Some decried the whole debate as so much erudite gobbledygook, while others go into painstaking detail about the ethers, esters and aldehydes coming to life as the hours unfold. I fall somewhere in between.
My take? Letting a good medium to full-bodied red (e.g. Cabs, Zins, Shiraz like the Mollydooker above, Chateauneuf du Pape, etc) breath for an hour or so will greatly enhance the subtle flavors hiding underneath the big fruit. The good news is that they should taste fine straight out of the bottle if you give the glass an obligatory swirl. Even a lighter-bodied Pinot Noir or Cotes du Rhone should benefit from a little time out of the bottle. Experiment with your favorite. This can be done in one or two back-to-back evenings; or, even better, on several different occasions, as long as you take good notes. With other tasters present, open the bottle, pour straightaway into the glass and swirl-sniff-sip and take notes on the aroma and taste. The next chance you get, open up another bottle of the same stuff and decant it for an hour (with a periodic swishing of the contents. Pour, swirl, sniff, sip, notate. See if all the tasters show that the wine has improved, and if so, to what degree. Then decide if it might taste even better with more time.
Ultimately, practicality and patience will dictate the day.

Now imagine the unthinkable -- a bottle doesn't get finished and you want to save what's left for tomorrow or beyond. What do you do?
As I thought about this, I recalled years ago that wine shops sold glass beads to pour into an open bottle. The idea was that the glass beads (essentially just marbles) would displace the fluid enough to allow little space for air, and therefore allow little oxidation to ruin the vino. I haven't noticed these in wine shops lately, so perhaps the vacuum pump sealer has replaced that method.

With a few pumps, the air is drawn out and the remaining wine should be good for another evening. There are many variations on this basic idea, including battery-operated vacuums to spare the tedious effort of hand-pumping. I certainly would recommend this basic under $10 system over using the cork or a basic bottle-topper for overnight storage.

If any of you have a expensive wine habit, and have a spare $300 to help support that habit, buy a Coravin! It is amazing and I've seen it in action and tasted what it can do. tool should change how wine shops sell, how wine sellers like myself sell to wine shops, and how the wine geek at home can have their wine cake and drink it too. The inventor's wife had learned she was pregnant, so he was left to drink alone for a few months. He was already in product design, and had invented some keen medical devices. Putting that knowledge to work, Greg Lambrecht decided to invent this gadget that has a surgical steel needle that inject argon to fill the ullage and then forces the wine to be poured out. The needle is so small that, when removed, allows the cork to simply return to normal. I tasted a Barolo at Table Wine here in Asheville that Josh Spurling had sampled from (it is never technically opened) over two weeks earlier. It was beautiful, and without a hint or trace of oxidation to my palate.

I would love to find one of these in my stocking this year!

In closing (pun intended), I still enjoy the fun short-term stoppers that are found everywhere. Here's my sentimental favorite -- bought on a trip to Venice with my lovely wife.

Ciao!