How to decant... properly!

This seems to be a subject a lot of people find they need demystifying, I learned how to do this in a pretty upmarket hotel restaurant where I learned how to Somellier professionally.


First off - not all wines need decanting before drinking, whites and roses almost never benefit much from it. But lets imagine for instance your wine loving ways has meant your friends and family have given up imagining what to buy you for christmas and you suddenly find youself with a rack full of great wines to work your way through.


Crack open one of those deep reds, a Rioja or Claret for example, and glug it into a decanter, thats the speedy way some restaurants do it - this is totally pointless, yes it will airate the wine and start to release the flavours but you'll be sipping with clenched teeth trying to block out the purple grit you should have got out if you did it properly!


Things you'll need:


A decanter (this kinda thing)...

A tealight and a lighter/matches


Your guests wine glasses positioned at the top right of their plate


A wine glass turned upside down


An absorbant cloth or teatowel


I shouldnt need to tell you to bring your wine and corkscrew at this point... :)



(Dont forget to google the winery and find out a little bit of info on the wine to blub about while you get set decanting, people in any situation are going to appreciate something more the more they know about it
You know how you always get hungry while watching cooking programmes? - Same principle.)


Now clear a little space on your table, its quite handy to have a small coffee table or something to wheel up to the side of your dining table incase the worst does happen (the one day my decanting table was being used elsewhere in the restaurant I ended up dumping a half a bottle of inky red wine over the MD's wife - I like wine but I never said I was classy! This is clearly why you need a cloth handy)


On the left hand side of your space put your decanter, cleaned with just water - washing up liquid can taint the wine.


In the middle put your upturned wine glass, on top of this place a tealight and light it.


Now open your wine, smell the cork - if it smells a bit like mushrooms it's probably corked, if it smells like wine, hurrah! go ahead.


Holding the neck of the bottle over the flame so you can clearly see the candle will allow you to see the wine passing out of the top of the bottle, hold your decanter at the right angle and begin pouring into it.


As the wine runs out of the bottle and in to the decanter you can see if anything solid or dusty is beginning to come through, if you see it come through slowly stop the stream of wine for a few seconds and start pouring again, this will let it settle back at the bottom of the bottle.


Once the bottle is starting to run out it might be too full of sediment to avoid getting it in the decanter - in that case sacrifice the small couple of centimetres of wine left at the bottom of the bottle and enjoy your decanted, airated, flavourful wine as it starts to open up after god knows how long in the bottle. You can show the black silt at the bottom of the wine bottle to your guests so they can gawk at your masterful skill...


The point of decanting is not to have something pretty looking to pour your wine from - its about bringing the wine back to life as the winemaker intended it. Years in bottle can leave wine a little closed and boring, by releasing it into the air the fruits become soft and supple again, much in the same way an apple gets less bitter and more sweet after its been cut open. Dont be afraid to glug the wine as your decant, this adds more air speeding up the "opening up" of the wine. If you dont have a lot of time on your hands, or one decant hasnt particularly done anything - decant more than once! It just speeds up the effect. Theres no rule against this anywhere and if it improves the taste why wouldnt you?


So now you've impressed your guests with how much hard studied knowledge you have about this particular winery (gathered from google) and how smoothly and casually you can decant your wines while being watched, and holding up a conversation . You can sit back, relax, and once your friends and family are suitably typsy - you can tell them you really wanted a kindle.

Facts Facts Glorious Facts....

In my career so far I’ve been asked countless questions from serious wine lovers and haters, connoisseurs and newbies to wine and I thought it about time to begin thinking of some of the oddest, most common or interesting things I’ve learned so far in my quest to be able to answer as many questions as possible. For those of you with different experience levels these might be simple or very new. Always feel free to ask me any questions or email me :)

In an immaculately clean, scratch, dust  microbe free glass – fizzy wine wont bubble! Sparkling wine needs these impurities to release its fizz. We would feel it in our mouths but not see it in the glass.

Never let someone elses expertise of one particular area bother you, in wine it will never be possible to know everything as it is always changing – for example Italy alone has around 1700 different registered and non registered native grape varieties alone! It would be a challenge to master a fraction of those varieties, so find an area you are particularly interested in and enjoy finding out more about it, then at the next party or tasting you can freely show off your passion and love for that area.

Fridges are too cold for white wine! Even on the warmest setting most fridges cool whites to the level of masking the delicate aromas and flavours. Instead of drinking straight from the fridge try taking it out for half an hour or so and letting it get to a better temperature. The trick to keeping it cool in the glass is to only pour a small amount, and top up as the wine goes down with the cooler liquid from the bottle

Decanting can be a challenge to time right, if you want an excellent red to open up properly or you don’t have time to give it at least 24 hours try this little trick, plain and simple – decant the wine more than once! you won’t damage it, you can’t ruin it – but by increasing the amount of air circulation by pouring the wine more than once you allow it to develop a little quicker

This one always comes up in pub quizzes for some reason – but here is the definitive guide to bottle sizes!

A Standard wine bottle holds 0.75 litre (750ml) = the equivalent of 1 standard wine bottle
A Magnum wine bottle holds 1.5 litres (1500ml) = the equivalent of 2 standard wine bottles
A Jeroboam wine bottle holds 3 litres (3000ml) = the equivalent of 4 standard wine bottles
A Rehoboam wine bottle holds 4.5 litres (4500ml) = the equivalent of 6 standard wine bottles
A Methuselah wine bottle holds 6 litres (6000ml) = the equivalent of 8 standard wine bottles
A Salmanazar wine bottle holds 9 litres (9000ml) = the equivalent of 12 standard wine bottles
A Balthazar wine bottle holds 12 litres (12000ml) = the equivalent of 16 standard wine bottles
A Nebuchadnezzar wine bottle holds 15 litres (15000ml) = the equivalent of 20 standard wine bottles

We’ve all heard stories of people being blackeyed by an unruly flying champagne cork, but definitely do be careful! The record for longest cork flight was set in New York and shot up an impressive 177ft 9 inches, which shows an impressive force behind the cork of roughly 8 times the pressure of earth’s atmosphere at sea level

If a wine you thought you really would like doesn’t taste as good as you wanted, have a think about how hydrated you are, if you are dehydrated you lose the ability to taste as well as if you rehydrate yourself well beforehand.

To “Toast” actually refers to a tradition of ancient Rome, by dropping a piece of toast in a glass of wine was believed to rid it of any impurities, to do this while pouring somebody else’s wine showed them great respect.

There are roughly 250 Calories in a glass of wine, This is just on average! Reds are slightly more calorific than the whites but not by far! The sweeter or more alcoholic the wine the more the calories

If you’re interested in the health benefits of red wines – the particular reds to be drinking are Petit Verdot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and Syrah. For those who prefer a white wine – studies show that the Muscat grape has a similar level of resveratol to Pinot Noir giving it similar cholesterol reducing characteristics.  

But, before glugging it away remember that one 250ml glass is as much as you're allowed a night! According to the allmighty NHS

          "An Alcoholic has been lightly defined as a man who drinks more than his own Doctor"

-Alvan L. Barach

Sulphites... Sickly or Super?

Something I hear a lot of is “Oh but wine is full of chemicals now it’s all made in factories these days” Or “Sulphites give me a bad headache!”

Lets clear something up – Sulphites, or sulphur dioxide to give it it’s full name, has always been present in wine, from the day somebody thought “those rotting grapes smelled kind of interesting” to Kate and Wills Toasting with English Fizz at their wedding party.

Sulphites occur naturally during fermentation, it is to fermenting grape juice what penicillin is to people, it clears up all sorts of bugs, viruses and other nasties which might render the wine useless or even worse – undrinkable. Without it our beloved wine would turn simply into vinegar, and we can’t have that happen now can we?  

Only a small handful of Organic wines have sulphite levels so low it doesn’t require the statement on the label however these are incredibly rare. But In the US, EU and parts of Asia it is compulsory that a wine states it has sulphites – this is because sulphites can cause an allergic reaction in up to 5% of Asthma sufferers. This same average level of 30 to 150 parts per million, (yes, million) is also present in dried apricots, so why does wine get such a bad rap?

The truth is most people would rather blame their headache the following day on an ingredient in the wine rather than drinking on an empty stomach, being too dehydrated to start with, or simply drinking too much.

Apart from the appearance of big factory-like buildings producing wine these days, the fact is it is simpler than ever before, we have the technology and the know-how now to keep wineries as clean as possible – so in contrast to what some people may think about the “good old days” - Wine in the bottle has now been tampered with far less and contains much less sulphur dioxide than ever before, and that’s a good thing.

So the next time your friend tells you “It’s those sulphites in wine these days” give them a glass of water and tell them to go lie down. And obviously email them a link to this page...