Wine racking operations serve to avoid altering its taste and peculiarities: here's how and when to do them correctly.

When decanting wine?

Staying at Castello Banfi Wine Resort, in the romantic hamlet of Poggio alle Mura in the Tuscan hills, is an ideal opportunity to deepen one's knowledge of local wines and wine production, discovering, for example, which grape varieties are most common in the Montalcino area, what "remuage" means or when wine is decanted.

For the guests of Castello Banfi Wine Resort, and not only, we organize interesting guided tours of our winery, an evocative environment where the castle's ancient warehouses have been transformed to accommodate winemaking and where Banfi's fine wine products come to life. Here, traditional methods sit side by side with the most modern and sophisticated techniques, thanks to the futuristic experiments Banfi has always promoted and the experience of his oenological team.

Some processes, such as decanting wine, require in-depth knowledge of local grapes and their characteristics to preserve their aromas and flavors until the final product is bottled and tasted. The very operation of decanting the wine is the one that allows its flavor and aroma to remain intact. When is wine decanted and why?

Why decanting wine?

Before explaining when to decant wine and at what stage of the production process this delicate operation takes place, it is essential to know why wine is decanted. As anticipated, the purpose is to keep the chemical, biological and organoleptic characteristics of the wine intact to ensure its quality and eliminate fermentation residues.

In fact, alcoholic fermentation of the must necessarily produces waste substances such as spent yeast, skins, grape seeds and other sediments that settle to the bottom of the barrel and, if not separated at the appropriate time, risk affecting the quality of the wine. Decanting the wine is done right after fermentation, with special attention to the timing that varies from wine to wine.

When to decant wine: a question of balance and timing

Intervening too early by decanting the wine would not give the must time to come into contact with the yeasts and thus develop alcoholic fermentation.

Intervening too late, thus leaving the wine in contact with the spent yeast for a long time, would instead produce unpleasant scents and flavors in the barrel that would irreparably alter the wine characteristics. These scents are also known by the expression "scum odors." It is the wine team's job to figure out when to decant the wine.

In the process of decanting wine, special attention should be paid to the oxygenation, that is, exposure of the product to air:

●      On the one hand, it is necessary to oxygenate the wine to remove any "lees odor."

●      On the other hand, it should not oxygenate too much so as not to lose its distinctive olfactory characteristics.

Each wine has its own timeframes, and experts have learned about them. A delicate wine with few tannins, for example, needs to be protected from oxygen while a fuller-bodied red can benefit from brief exposure to air.

Air decanting and closed decanting

To preserve the unique characteristics of each wine, two different methods can be used to decant the wine:

●      air decanting

●      closed decanting

Air decanting means decanting the wine from the container where it is fermented into a smaller, open container to promote oxygenation and the elimination of unpleasant odors that may be created during fermentation.

Closed decanting, on the other hand, is generally used for more delicate wines and minimizes contact with air by taking advantage of the action of a pump (called a "wine pump") that transfers the wine from one container to another.

First, second and third decanting: when are they done?

Answering the question "when do you decant wine?" is not easy since wines undergo at least three decanting operations, if not more in the case of red wines aged several years:

●      the first decanting takes place immediately after fermentation, with different timing depending on the type of wine;

●      the second decanting takes place in early winter, when the low temperature makes it easier for the sediment and lees that precipitate to the bottom of the barrel to separate;

●      Finally, the third decanting generally takes place in spring, between March and April.

After the third decanting, white wines are ready to be bottled while the aging process in the cellar begins for red wines. So, when do you decant red wine to be aged? Red wines that rest in the cellar for several years generally need to be decanted twice a year (in spring and winter) and, if necessary, a small amount of sulfur dioxide, a substance essential to prevent the proliferation of bacteria inside the barrels, is added to replenish the one lost and volatilized during decanting.