Wow, what a weekend. Some incredible highs and sadly a low or two. I don’t want to get into the not-too-interesting details of my personal life in this medium but lets just say I need to update my blog bio. 😉
OK, now that that is out of the way, I want to touch on the idea of decanting. I received an email from Wine Enthusiast online a few weeks ago. Like so many others they are apparently Vlogging. There is a nice piece written about decanting as well as a quick video. While they do sell the products they are writing/reporting about, the information is useful.
That said I believe the important points about decanting are summed up perfectly in the first line written bu Erika; that decanting is done “for enhancing the flavors of a young wine or for removing sediment from an old wine”. I’m not certain that I would use the same language, but it does present the case for decanting.
Some experts disagree about the first part (enhancing flavors) but all do agree that IF you choose to remove an old wine from the sediment that may be at the bottom of the bottle, a decanter is useful. CAVEAT – older wines break down when exposed to oxygen much quicker than younger wines. And decanting an older wine to remove it from its sediment puts the wine at risk of premature oxidization.
A wine mentor of mine suggests simply pouring a wine with sediment very gently (at a 90 degree angle) from the bottle into the glasses and not removing it from the bottle to avoid this extra risk. Using this method you will likely need to leave the last 10% (or so) of the wine in the bottle at the end.
On a completely separate note, I came across a business wire article about Argentinian wines. Apparently Argentinian wine imports are “on fire” (nice PR work!).
Argentina’s department of customs reports that Argentine wines were up 43.2% in value and 34.1% in volume. Those are some pretty impressive figures – especially when you consider the state of our economy and the lack of growth most wine regions have experienced of late. Given Argentina’s image as producing quality VALUE wines this does make sense, but it is no less impressive.
As an Israeli wine person I must admit that it makes me wonder what Israel wine needs to do to gain wider acceptance. The experts agree that the quality is there. Is it simply a matter of price?
I truly believe that when WE finally get retail locations to rid themselves of their “kosher” wine sections and simply stock their kosher wines like they do their other wines (by region, varietal, etc) that Israeli wines will take a huge step forward. This is by no means a revolutionary idea, as it has been proposed countless times by my contemporaries. Now I wonder, how can we get the retail decision makers to listen?
Happy Argentinan/Israeli wine tasting…decanted or not!
WTG
