The blood of Jesus, the drink of the gods, the substance in which, according to the philosopher Pliny the Elder, the truth is stored, is all this wine, an amazing creation of nature and human hands. You can talk about it endlessly, because each individual wine has its own story, written over the centuries.
But today we will confine ourselves to a story about a not very common accessory, which is directly related to the culture of serving noble drinks. This decanter decanter is a vessel absolutely necessary for true connoisseurs of the divine drink. It is in it, and not in the bottle, that wine should be served on the table.
So, decanters for wine
In a good restaurant you can watch how the sommelier celebrates: slowly and carefully, he pours a precious drink from a bottle into a special decanter, and only after a certain period of time serves the guests. This procedure is called decantation, or decanting. Its main practical goal is to obtain pure wine, without particles of sediment, formed naturally in separate bottles.
When decanting mature wines, the sommelier traditionally monitors the progress of the sediment to the neck of the bottle in the soft light of a wax candle, and at the right moment stops the transfusion into the decanter. After a short time, the wine from the vessel is carefully poured into the glasses, and the sediment particles that have fallen from the bottle remain at its bottom. The decanting of old wine requires a particularly careful approach, so that, pouring it, not upset the fragile balance and harmony of the bouquet.
For young tannin wines with the potential for long aging, transfusion into the decanter is carried out not to separate the sediment, but for effective oxygenation. This helps them to open up and demonstrate the complexity of the aroma and the noble taste. To speed up the aeration process, pouring into decanters for wine is done quickly, certainly in advance, that is, no later than 1-3 hours before serving. During this time, the young drink manages to be saturated with oxygen and, as the sommelier says, “dissolve” in the decanter, getting rid of harsh tones and tannins.
In the assortment of wine accessories manufacturers, decanting fans can find both the simplest glass decanter and an exclusive designer decanter. The price of them depends on the complexity of the form, material and even the flow of fashion. It ranges from several hundred rubles to several thousand. The best decanters for wine are made by hand from transparent crystal or crystal. Often, glassblowers give them the most bizarre shape, of course, while maintaining the necessary functionality. In principle, to fulfill its intended role, two main types of decanters are needed, so that all other decanters for wine are just variations. The shape of the vessel is selected depending on the variety of the drink and the method of decantation.
So, decanters for unopened young wines have a wide lower part and a neck expanding in the form of a funnel. Vessels for mature wine, well aged and already saturated with oxygen during long-term storage, usually take the form of a ball or a decanter with a narrow neck. This neck regulates the flow of air, which allows you to very carefully "wake up" the aroma of a noble old drink. From the point of view of hedonism and aesthetics, for people, decanting is a beautiful ritual that can enrich the wine experience and give pleasure, and for wine it is an opportunity to breathe and restore balance, in a word, to blossom like a flower from a bud.