Winning the Decantathalon

I just got back from an informal tasting with my friend HamGeek (the radio kind, not the pork kind). I borrowed his tongue for a decanting experiment. I was trying to recreate some of the conditions that caused my storied sommelier such anguish, and to really test what effect decanting has on a wine that is not 40 years old.

I picked a 2000 Vignobles Mousset-Barrot Châteunuef Du Pape from for the experiment.

I've had this wine in storage for a few years now, and while I expect it will get better with even more aging it was one of the older "consumables" in the cellar. We poured 1/2 the bottle into a decanter and immediately corked the remainder. After a few minutes we poured the decanted wine and tasted.

Well, yuck. Although it had nice color and great legs the wine had a very subtle, weak aroma; a mild floral taste up front, and a huge acidic throat-choking aftertaste. Now the wine wasn't BAD - BAD wine is something I'll write about later - but it was extremely disappointing. After about 15 minutes in the decanter it improved a little bit, gaining some increased floral/fruit taste and lessening the acidity a bit. But it never became good.

We then uncorked the remainder and drank it straight from the bottle. Somewhat to my suprise the un-decanted wine was significantly better than the decanted version. There was a stronger fruit/floral flavor up front and the overall experience was more balanced. The nasty acidity still remained however. Letting the bottled version breathe didn't seem to improve matters much. The wine seemed to have a "sweet spot" flavor-wise at about 45 minutes in the bottle.

My conclusion is that this was a mediocre wine which I paid too much for. Decanting hurt it, but the fault doesn't lie entirely with the process - it lies with the wine.