Why Aerate?

Aeration

Aeration (exposing wine to air) enhances the flavor of wine or spirits by oxidizing the tannins present in wine, making the wine or spirits taste less astringent or bitter. Heavy red wines such as Cabernet, Shiraz, Syrah, Malbec, Old Vine Zinfandel, Bordeaux and others are particularly astringent due to their high tannin content. Tannins slowly break down within unopened bottles as years pass, but the process is accelerated to seconds when exposed to oxygen in air. Dissolved oxygen quickly reacts with tannins, effectively accelerating the aging of wine and spirits. The most basic method of aeration is to open the bottle and let it sit for 30 minutes to hours prior to serving. However, bottles have such narrow profiles providing very little wine or spirit to air surface area to dissolve oxygen from air into the wine or spirit to oxidize tannins. Moreover, with no stirring or agitation, only the layer of wine or spirits near the air surface is oxygenated. Thus, the process is lengthy.

Decanting

A somewhat improved method of aerating wine and spirits is decanting. Shown above, right, a decanter is an open container with an enlarged lower section designed such that its widest area occurs at the 750 mL volume level, the typical volume of a bottle of wine. A decanter thus provides enlarged wine-to-air surface area for enhanced aeration of wine. Disadvantages of this method include the volume of wine or spirits aerated per batch is fixed at 750mL, while wine drinking continues to migrate away from bottles to single servings from bag-in-box packaging.

Hyper-Decanting

Aerating wine by aggressively whisking, known as hyper-decanting, shortens the process to seconds...and it's fun!

The stirring action instantly distributes dissolved oxygen throughout the wine as shown on the video on our main page immediately oxidizing away the bitterness of tannins.

Just whip it and sip it!