Let’s face it — it can feel like there are a lot of tedious steps to enjoying a nice glass of wine. Unlike a bottle of juice or a can of beer, the delicate tannic structure of wine, especially red wine, means it may require some breathing room before it can be fully appreciated. We accomplish this through decanting, a process of exposing wine to oxygen to help soften its tannins and remove sediment buildup, especially useful for older wines.
Typically, this step requires an open glass vessel called a decanter, which often has a shaft-and-globe shape, plus time and patience — about one to two hours to allow the wine to oxygenate. However, innovative (and impatient) wine drinkers have discovered a decanting hack to speed up the process: Simply pour your wine into a blender and blend for 30 seconds to a minute before immediately serving. Supposedly, this hyper-efficient method works to aerate wine quickly by rapidly breaking its surface tension, thereby exposing its entire surface area to air in seconds.
Unfortunately, according to a wine expert, this hack has the potential to seriously damage the integrity of your wine. Kristin Ma, the co-founder and beverage and service director of Cecily in Brooklyn, New York, says, “Chances are, you’ll end up making your wine worse” through over-oxidization if you try the blender trick. “Your window for blending in the right amount of oxygen but not over doing it is very short, [so] the margin for error is high,” she says.
Why you should stick to traditional decanting over blending
Unlike the traditional decanting process, which exposes wine to air slowly due to a decanter’s unique shape, the blender method — also known as hyper-decanting — does it so rapidly that it threatens to change its entire structural composition. Kristin Ma explains, “When you decant a bottle by hand, the surface area only increases for the length of time it takes for you to pour the wine into the decanter. The surface area is then limited to the width of your decanter.” In contrast, she says, “A blender breaks up the surface tension of the wine to incorporate air, thereby multiplying the amount of air the wine sees in seconds.” Ma warns that this can easily leave you with an overoxidized wine and make fruity notes in the red seem flat.
Overoxidization is not the only potential threat with the blender method, either. As Ma points out, “What did you last make in your blender or what did you last use your immersion [blender] for? Do you want any of those residual flavors in your wine? Is your blender warming up as you run the motor?” This kind of un-specialized tool is best kept away from your wine, especially nice bottles you don’t want to ruin with unwanted tastes, textures, and temperature changes.
Instead, for best results, Ma recommends sticking with traditional decanting. “Hold the decanter by its neck at an angle,” she says. “Elevate your thumb on the hand holding the decanter, and rest the neck of the bottle on your thumb while pouring into the decanter.”
