Should you decant Bordeaux? And for how long?

The 2 reasons and the 2 methods

The age of the wine tells you which job you are asking of the decanter, and the 2 jobs call for opposite handling. For an old wine it is a separator: red Bordeaux throws a deposit as it ages, and the deposit tastes bitter and gets in the way. For a young wine it is a way to give air: pouring a tight, tannic red (drying and grippy on the gums) from a closed bottle into an open vessel lets it breathe.

The old wine asks for patience before the pour and speed after it. The young one can be poured fast and left to wait.

Age of the wine	Why decant	When to decant
Under 5 years	Air	Up to 4 hours before serving, poured briskly
5 to 20 years	Some air, some sediment	1 to 2 hours before serving
Over 20 years	Sediment	Just before serving, poured gently

Jancis Robinson, the British wine writer, gives these times as a starting point, not a rule. The younger the wine, the longer it can wait in the decanter; past 20 years, it should not wait at all. A wine in the middle row is old enough to have thrown some deposit and young enough to gain from air. It takes a little of both methods: the bottle stood upright and poured with care, then left an hour or 2 in the decanter.

A young wine needs more than a pulled cork

Pulling the cork an hour early does very little, because almost none of the wine touches the air. What works is pouring the whole bottle into a decanter, a jug or even another clean bottle, and doing it with some vigor. Steven Spurrier, the wine merchant who wrote for Decanter magazine, poured young wines harder than old ones because the aeration opens them.

An old wine is decanted for clarity, not for time

The work starts before the cork comes out. Stand the bottle upright for a day or 2 so the deposit slides down to the bottom; Spurrier stood his for at least a few hours. Move it to the table without shaking it.

Old corks crumble. A 2-prong opener (the Ah-So type) grips the cork from the sides and lifts it whole where a corkscrew would shred it. Keep a fine strainer or a square of muslin at hand: if the cork breaks anyway, pour through it and the bottle is saved.

The pour:

Cut the capsule about 1 centimeter (half an inch) below the lip.
Draw the cork slowly, keeping the bottle as still as you can.
Put a strong light behind the neck of the bottle: a candle, a flashlight, a desk lamp.
Pour in one slow, steady movement, angling the bottle so the wine runs into the decanter without splashing.
Stop as soon as the sediment reaches the neck, leaving about 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) in the bottle.

Then serve it at once. A very old wine can fade within minutes of the pour, so every minute in the decanter is a risk rather than a gain.

A narrow neck and a stopper

Choose a decanter with a narrow neck, so it pours cleanly, and a stopper, so you decide whether air gets in. Clean it with warm water; a denture-cleaning tablet dissolved in the water lifts the stains that rinsing leaves.

When you are not sure, ask the glass

The CIVB (opens in a new tab), the Bordeaux wine council, suggests a simple test for a wine of 10 years or more. Pour a little into a glass and smell it before swirling, then swirl and smell it again. If the second smell is fuller than the first, the wine wants air, anywhere from a few minutes to several hours in the decanter. If it seems muted or fragile, do not decant it at all: pour small glasses and let it breathe there.

For the oldest bottles, the best decanter is the glass.