I inherited a rather beautiful cut-glass decanter from my late grandfather. Nobody seems to use decanters anymore. It seems a pity not to use Granddad’s decanter. Is there any benefit in putting it to use? The original reason for using decanters has mostly fallen away. Old wines usually developed tartrate crystals as they aged. These crystals settled as a gritty residue on the bottom (or side) of the bottle. To get rid of these, the wine bottle was lifted gently from its storage rack, and the contents poured carefully into a decanter, leaving the gritty crystals behind. Modern wines are usually stabilised before bottling, so tartrate crystals do not form. There’s no harm, however, in decanting your wine to add an elegant touch to a formal dinner table. You might also like to pass a decanter of port or sherry round at the end of a special meal. Is it true that the better wines are sold in bottles sealed with corks, and cheaper wines come with screw caps? If so, does this mean that corks improve the flavour or longevity of the wine? Several wine producers have experimented with bottling identical wines under cork and screw cap. So far, there has been no indication that the corksealed bottles are any better than those with screw caps. Screw caps are cheaper than corks. Remember, expensive whiskeys are sold under screw caps. Nothing cheap or nasty about them. Packaging, however, is an important facet of marketing. Just as expensive chocolates are wrapped in silver paper and packed in pretty boxes instead of plain plastic bags, the cork and foil cover adds a nice touch of glamour to your wine bottle. Besides, that satisfactory “plop” of a cork being pulled is a traditional signal for the start of a good time, isn’t it?
Your Wine FAQs your Wine Questions answered by David biggs
I am puzzled by the fact that some wines are sold for more than R500 a bottle, while others, made from exactly the same variety of grape, can be bought for around R50 a bottle. Is there really that much difference in quality, or is it just a matter of snob value or pretentiousness? Many factors contribute to the value of a bottle of wine—different soils, slopes, vine management techniques, selection of grapes, sorting the berries and bunches, and so on. Winemaking skill and experience play a major role. As Dave Biggs says about himself, “Remember that Will Shakespeare and Dave Biggs use exactly the same 26 letters of the alphabet for their writing, but it is generally acknowledged that Shakespeare produced work of a greater value than that of Biggs.”
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