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What is a Wine Aerator and Do You Need One?
Although many people have never even heard of a wine aerator, this is an item which many wine drinkers use regularly. A wine aerator is designed to aerate your wine, enabling all the flavors to come out and making it more enjoyable.
If you pour wine from the bottle into a glass, you are not allowing it to "breathe" so some of the depth of the wine and the wine's flavors will not be apparent. A wine aerator gives the wine the space it needs to release all its aromas and flavors, by maximizing the wine's exposure to the surrounding air. This warms the wine and encourages the aromas to open up, and the flavors to mellow and soften. This device looks like a decorative tube (or stemless glass) which you pour the wine through.
Although purchasing a wine aerator is optional, it does make wine taste better. A wine aerator is not expensive and you can get them in nice designs and different colors. Unless you have tried a wine aerator yourself, it might be difficult to understand how it is worth the money though. The best way to try out a wine aerator is to pour one glass of wine from the bottle to a glass, and pour a second one through the wine aerator. Taste each one and you should notice a difference. The aerated wine should be smoother and tastier.
Which Wines to Aerate
Red ones benefit the most from aeration, although some whites can also improve with air exposure. Most wines improve with as little as fifteen minutes exposure to the air, but a young wine with high levels of tannins might need longer. The more tannins a wine has, the longer it will need to aerate. A light-bodied red wine such as Pinot Noir has low tannin levels and will therefore need a very short aeration time.
A young Cabernet Sauvignon might require an hour for the maximum flavor mellowing to occur. You could drink such a wine as soon as you open the bottle, but aerating it will improve its flavor. If you are serving a mature wine, perhaps something older than eight years, you should decant it and then give it a small period of aeration, else the flavor will start to deteriorate.
Other Ways to Aerate Wine
It is not correct that uncorking a bottle of wine and letting it sit for a while aerates it, because there is not enough surface area to allow the wine adequate air contact. You might like to decant the wine into a decanter, pitcher, or other large, clean vessel with a wide opening, to give the wine a greater surface area on top.
You could also aerate your wine in the glass. Pour the wine into the center of the wine glass, allowing eight inches of "fall" between the bottle and glass while you pour, so it aerates both during pouring and then afterwards in the glass.
So, should you buy a wine aerator? It really depends on how much wine you drink and what type and quality of wine you go for. You can use a decanter, pitcher or aerate your wine in the wine glasses if you prefer those methods, so a wine aerator is purely optional.
