Trying to figure out how to make your wine taste as good at home as it did at the winery? Explore this professional’s guide to letting wine breathe!
We all want our wine to taste as good as it does when we head to a winery. But the bottles we open in our homes often taste different than the glasses at our favorite vineyards. There are quite a few things that can impact the taste of wine at home compared to wineries, one being how long you’re letting wine breathe.
Breathing helps draw out specific flavors and aromas that one might overlook if it proceeds quickly from the bottle to the glass to your mouth. So the idea of letting a wine breathe is simply the process of exposing it to air for a period to soften flavors and release aromas.
But how do you do it? Below, you’ll find a professional’s guide to letting wine breathe. Take a look!
Which Wines Should You Let Breathe?
Typically, red wines are the ones that will benefit most from breathing before serving. Young red wines high in tannins will need aeration—it will soften their tannins soften and make the entire wine less harsh. When you get to aged reds, you’ll want to let all of them breathe, regardless of tannin level. A few examples of wines that could benefit from a breather:
- Cabernet Sauvignon
- Zinfandel
- Bordeaux
- Young Reds (the ones high in tannins)
- Aged Red Wines (to help settle their sediment)
Your Aeration Options
Part of you may think that it’s fine to just pop open the cork and let the wine breathe in the bottle. However, that’s only allowing a small portion of the wine to thrive in that little bit of oxygen. Instead, you have a couple of other options to consider: decanting, wine glass and wait, or portable aerators.
Decanters
If you’re having a fancy dinner, have 30 minutes or so to wait, or just really want to make sure that you’re tasting the best of the best when it comes to your wine’s flavors, then get a decanter. In fact, you don’t even technically need a proper decanter—any large liquid container with a wide opening at the top will do. The idea is that the increased surface area will allow more air to make contact with the wine.
Wine Glass and Wait
In a smaller sense, you can also let wine breathe and open up when you pour it into your glass. Now, you’ll want to make sure that you have a proper red wine glass—any glass with a wider opening will work since it’ll let more air in. Simply pour in the wine, swirl it around, and wait for a few minutes. If you can wait 15 minutes, do that! But either way, stirring the glass around will bring more wine in contact with the air.
Portable Aerators
All you’ll need is a portable aerator—there are tons out there, so just do a bit of research as to which ones work best. But the idea is that you pour the wine into the aerator over your glass of wine, and the aerator brings more oxygen into your pour. There are also aerators on the market that attach directly to the wine bottle. Again, it’s up to you to find which works best for your needs! It’s a quick option if that’s what you’re looking for.
We hope you enjoyed this professional’s guide to letting wine breathe. You can always turn to us for more answers to your questions and, of course, visit our online wine shopfor more red wines to practice decanting. Peruse our Premium wines or find a steal in our Last Chance wines section. Either way, you’re sure to find something amazing!
FAQs
Wine Glass and Wait
How to properly let wine breathe? ›
When letting the wine breathe, you can open a bottle and just let it sit for an hour. If you want to shorten that time, then you can pour it into a decanter to expose the wine to more air and surface. All wines benefit from letting them breathe.
How long do you let wine breathe after opening? ›
Zealously swirl the wine and let it rest for 20 minutes in the wine glass. This is sufficient time to open up any tannic red wine. If you plan on drinking more than one glass, pour the wine into a decanter and let it breathe for roughly 2 hours. The longer aeration period will soften the wine's strong tannin flavour.
What is it called when you let wine air out? ›
Both a decanter and aerator serve the same purpose – to let the wine “breathe.” Decanting does this by expanding the surface area of the wine to increase its contact with the air and allowing those more favorable aromas and flavors to develop as less favorable compounds evaporate.
Does letting wine breathe remove sulfites? ›
Letting a bit of the alcohol evaporate allows you to smell the wine, not just the alcohol. Sulfites in wine also disperse when you let the wine breathe.
How do you know if wine needs to breathe? ›
If your mouth tingles all over and the wine is slightly bitter, and you can't really taste much else, it needs to breathe.
Can you let wine breathe overnight? ›
Most wines will remain good for hours after they've been opened, and you don't need to worry about it—the whole time you are enjoying a wine, it's breathing. But if you're considering keeping an open bottle of wine overnight or longer, it will start to fade and take on nutty, earthy notes.
How to aerate wine without an aerator? ›
Aerating With Household Items
One method involves pouring the wine back and forth between two glasses for a few times until it's been sufficiently aerated.
Does aerating wine make it stronger? ›
Aeration will soften the alcohol and tannins in the wine making bigger, young boozy wines ready to drink faster. Yes, you can aerate white and sweet wine as well.
Can you aerate wine too much? ›
If a wine is aerated for too long or too aggressively, it can lose some fruitiness and become flat or dull. Unnecessary for young wines: Some wine experts argue that aeration is unnecessary for young red wines, which are less complex than older wines.
Any wine can taste better after aeration, but not all of them do. Young wines can become more expressive, AKA fruity, while well-aged wines can “wake up” from their slumber. Generally, full-bodied red wines, tannic wines and full-bodied (oak-aged) white wines are the most common aerated wines.
Why does wine taste better after aerating? ›
Tannins also oxidize and break down, becoming less astringent. When you aerate wine, its alcohol evaporates faster, carrying aromatic compounds with it, and even foul odors, such as sulfur scents, will dissipate with this technique. Aeration opens up the wine's flavors and makes it overall more enjoyable.
Does shaking wine aerate it? ›
And since air is a great way to open up a wine, when you re-cork the bottle and shake it up, you're quickly exposing all of the wine to that good air as you shake. Not just the surface, which is why traditional breathing (read: waiting around) takes so long.
Are wine aerators worth it? ›
Aerating a wine allows for volatile compounds like sulfites to evaporate while the interaction with oxygen opens up flavors and smoothes out tannins.
How do you get oxygen out of wine? ›
Inert Gas Blanketing
Using an inert gas cover is great ways to limit oxygen exposure to both must and wine. Options may include using carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen, and argon.
Are you supposed to let wine sit in your mouth? ›
Take a sip from your glass and let the wine sit in your mouth for a moment. At this stage, some people like to swish the wine around in their mouth, like they're using mouthwash. They're doing this so the wine touches all of their taste buds, but it's not necessary.
