Decanting wine is a somewhat unkown terroritory for many, assumption is that is for those expensive wines you order at a resturant and you have a sommelier serving you. It is pretty much a simple rule to follow when deciding to decant or not decant a wine, or even a Champagne!
Why do people decant wines? This can be broken up in to three choice reasons, firstly so to air the wine increasing the expression of aromas and flavours. Decanting a wine will also help to remove any sediment and lastly, if the cork as broken / crumbled then it would be advisable to decant the wine.
"Decanting a wine is mostly done so to increase the aromas and flavours by aeration and also to remove any sediment (especially from older wines / ports). Decanting mostly involves older and more delicate wines to include Champagne, though young reds, for instance, can still slightly benefit, even if by 1%, from the aeration, but this is somewhat a controversial topic in the wine industry with those for and against the need to decant young wines."
Should you decant a Champagne? There would be little point to decanting a recently produced Champagne as the bubbles in the glass will be aerating the wine for you. The only time a new Champagne should ever be decanted is if there were ever, as rare as it might be, a problem with the cork or there was a small layer of lees visable in the bottle. Decanting a newer Champagne could cause a lot of the fizzy characters to fade when being re-poured from decanter to glass.
If you are going to enjoy an older bottle of Champagne (especially with long bottle / on cork aging), let's say from the mid 1980's and before, which is likely to have lost a lot of it's effervescence in the bottle, then decanting is certainly an option. It will greatly depend on what Champagne label you are opening from which year, some Champagne will be overly delicate with very fragile aromas and flavours so decanting might destroy these memories - Those bolder and deeper character Champagnes would benefit from a decant so to aliven hidden characters.
"Decanting does help, I am not dismissing the topic. For me though, a personal preference only, I'd rather open a bottle and let it sit for upto an hour and then have a big and wide bowled glass where I can let the wine sit once poured and if necessary swirl so to action the decanting process myself." Christopher Walkey - Founder champagnecollectors.com
