Like us, wine needs to breathe. It gets cramped living in its bottle for years (or decades), so a good red wine appreciates room to stretch its legs. According to experts, decanting, aerating or oxygenating can mellow sharp tannins, open up the subtler aromas, and accentuate the structure and flavor of wine. It seems, opening the bottle and letting it sit for a few minutes just isn’t going to cut it.Let’s start with some basic info. Traditionally decanting is done for two reasons:The first is to separate the wine from the sediment that forms as wine ages. You’ll only run into this with older, more venerable wines.The second and more salient reason is to oxygenate the surface area of the wine. This allows the layers and subtle complexities in the wine to come to the forefront, smoothing out the flavors and aromas.Or does it? Let’s find out which aeration gadget performs the best — and, can the average casual wine drinker even tell the difference? The Taste TestersOur panel was composed of people with varying wine preferences and experience levels, including one self-professed ‘beer-drinking wine hater’. This test was structured like a blind taste test, with the tasters unaware of which wine they were drinking, or whether or not it was aerated. They were told they would be asked to provide their opinions on six different wines. Utmost care was taken to preserve the integrity of the science! The Contenders--------We were provided thee aerating devices to demo by the manufacturers, and put them toe-to-toe to determine which was the most successful.The aerators were judged by the following merits:EffectivenessEase of UseFun to UseSimplicity of Set-up / Clean-upEach one of these aerators worked splendidly, so what it came down to is which one suits your needs the best. See the full results, at: http://www.minnesotauncorked.com/putting-aerators-to-the-test/
