In some restaurants, the staff doesn't want to take the risk of having a customer drink a corked or flawed wine, so they do the tasting themselves. In this situation, expect the wine waiter to show you the bottle before it's opened, and then take it away after you okay it. Then, at a station specifically set up for tasting wines, where there's a spittoon for the sommelier so he doesn't get a buzz on over the course of an evening, the sommelier will open and taste your wine. If it's bad, he'll get another bottle. If it's sound, he'll bring it back and pour it around. Seldom do sommeliers of this caliber call a wine wrong, but if you happen to get a bottle that has a major flaw he missed (it happens to the best of us), do bring it up.
Decanting
Why do some people get to drink their wine out of beautiful glass decanters while the rest of us get it poured straight out of the bottle?
Most wine doesn't need decanting; pouring it straight from the bottle is fine. Some wines, however, have a thick layer of gritty sediment at the bottom of the bottle that you'd rather not end up in your glass.
Some people, too, think that some wines benefit from extra air contact, and pouring them into a wide-bodied container will do just that. (So will shaking a glass up and down vigorously with your hand cupped over the top, but that's a little messy and doesn't look so good.)
Which Wines?
Wines that typically benefit from decanting are those that have been bound up in their glass bottles for the longest. These wines are likely to have "thrown some sediment"— that is, to have a layer of tannins, pigments, and other compounds that have fallen out of the solution to the bottom of the bottle. Decanting helps keep the sediment out of your glass.
Old wines can also develop "reduced," vegetal aromas, or seem to have very little aroma at all, after they've been hidden away from oxygen for so many decades. Putting an old wine in a decanter lets it "breathe" a bit, or literally sit in the presence of oxygen, so that its aromas and flavors slowly unfold. In a wine with very mature flavors, though, the amount of oxygen it comes in contact with while going into the decanter can blur the line between old wine and vinegar.
Some people like to decant almost all wines, except for sparkling (the bubbles would dissipate), the very old (they tend to disintegrate), and the very young and simple (extra air might make them fall apart, too). These people find that the extra oxygen helps bring out the aromas and flavors in the wine.
It's hard to prove, but everyday experience gives the theory some strong support. Ever notice how some wines change in the glass? How they start out with almost no aroma and little taste, and then, 15 minutes or an hour later, startle with seductive scents and luscious flavor? Or how the leftovers in a bottle taste better the day after it was opened?
The opposite happens, too. A wine tastes great for the first 15 minutes, but as it sits in the glass, it begins to taste duller, more acetic, less pleasant, as if it's falling apart by the minute. Or the leftovers taste awful the following day.
The change in a wine from bottle to decanter won't be as drastic as from one day to the next, but it can be significant. The thing is, you can't know for sure how a wine will react. If the wine is simple and juicy, aeration probably won't improve it; if it's tannic, acidic, and very dense with concentrated fruit, it well might. At home, you can experiment. At a restaurant, leave it up to the opinion of the wine steward, who should have an opinion about these things.
How to Decant
In the simplest situations—a young wine that you want to decant just for the benefit of some air or a pretty container—all that needs to be done is to dump the wine from bottle into decanter.
With an older wine, it's more complicated. If the wine is a special one you ordered earlier in the day, the sommelier will have stood the bottle up in a quiet place for the sediment to fall to the bottom.
If you ordered it that night, he'll just carefully take it from the cellar and move it into a decanting rack, if he has one, which keeps the bottle at an angle, or stand it up, endeavoring not to rile it up.
Then comes the entertaining part: Out comes a candle along with the decanter. Over the candle, he'll slowly pour the wine into the decanter. The light the candle throws helps him see when the sediment begins to flow toward the neck, so he can stop pouring before it comes out.
Often this will leave an inch of wine in the bottle. It might seem like a waste, but it's better than a mouthful of grit.
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