The Myth of Decanting (Again)

Somewhere along the way, decanting stopped being a tool and became a performance. What used to be a quiet ritual — a hand, a candle, a slow pour — is now a flex. Restaurants parade glass vessels shaped like alien lungs or something even funnier; influencers film slow-motion pours like they’re baptizing the wine into influencerhood. The act has outgrown its purpose.

The point of decanting was never spectacle. It was surgery. You did it to separate a fragile old wine from the gunk it collected over decades — a respectful gesture, not an aerobic exercise. The other legitimate reason was to give a young, angry wine a little air, to let it stretch and exhale before you drank it. That’s it. Two reasons. End of doctrine.

Then the market got involved, and nuance went the way of cork dust. Now everything gets decanted — Sauvignon Blanc, rosé, the five-dollar Malbec someone brought to a barbecue. The assumption is that decanting “opens up” wine, as though air were a kind of therapy and every bottle is repressing something. It’s nonsense. Some wines open; others unravel.

Pouring a fragile old Burgundy into a broad-bottomed glass to “wake it up” is like shaking your grandmother to see if she’s still breathing. Oxygen can be medicine or poison — the difference is timing.

Even young wines don’t always need it. The whole “let it breathe” cliché is often just an excuse for impatience dressed as sophistication. The truth is that most wines breathe just fine in your glass, one swirl at a time. A good glass and twenty minutes of conversation do more for a wine than any gadget ever sold in the name of enhancement.

There’s also a quiet arrogance behind the obsession. We assume the wine is incomplete until we intervene — that we can improve on years of farming and fermentation with a flourish of the wrist. Sometimes the most respectful thing you can do for a bottle is leave it alone.

Decant when you must: when there’s sediment, when a young tannic beast needs taming, when the wine smells like it’s been locked in a cupboard too long. But don’t make it theology. Not every bottle wants exposure; some wines prefer the dark.

So next time someone reaches for the swan-necked glass contraption and announces that they’re “releasing the bouquet,” pour yourself a quiet half-glass and watch. You’ll learn everything you need to know about wine — and people.

Because here’s the secret no one wants to say aloud: most wines aren’t waiting to be liberated. They’re just waiting to be drunk.