Hi all,

After Michael (call me Uranium) Scarpitti's silly assertion that wine
deteriorates the moment you open it, we carried out an interesting
experiment yesterday that any of you could do (with a different wine).

Two remaining bottles of '97 Vox Dei Franco-Rumanian red.

We planned to dring them with a rather spicy lamb dish at 8.30pm, so at
7.30pm (over the protests of my wife, who felt I should be busying myself
with serving pre-prandials) I decanted one bottle.

At 8.30, I opened the other. Ken Blake (a regular here) and I, both had two
identical pairs of Spiegelau glasses. I marked one of each pair with a gold
blob and took them into the kitchen for my wife to pour. She poured wine
from the decanted bottle into one glass and the undecanted wine into the
other. For the remaining members of the party, she poured from one bottle
into the man's glass and the other into the wife's glass (in the case of
Ken's wife and her glasses, these were paired).

So all four couples had access to both wines in identical glasses, but only
Jacquie knew which was which. ALL of us noticed quite significant
differences between the two wines, though opinions were divided as to which
we preferred. I found that there was little difference on the nose, while
Ken found one wine rather more forward and balanced, the other reticent. Of
the 8 of us, the 6 who had some experience with drinking wines all preferred
the same sample, finding that it was rounder and more expressive on the
mouth, 5 people found it more expressive on the nose as well.

Both of those who had little experience with drinking wines, found the one
wine more powerful, the other less interesting.

Jacquie then revealed that the wine the 4 experienced drinkers preferred,
finding it more agreeable, was that which had been decanted an hour - and
this for a 7 year old wine of little pretension. I find it interesting that
the two of us who had less experience with wine (and who probably never ever
decanted, therefore) both preferred the undecanted wine as being "stronger".

Anyone else care to try the same experiment, but with different wines?
--
All the Best
Ian Hoare
http://www.souvigne.com
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