Wine doesn’t require all the ceremony and pomp that some experts show, with the swilling and the swirling and the spitting and examining and who knows what else. But if you’re starting to really get into wine, there are some tools which can help you, at very little cost and effort, start to make the most of your wine experience. An aerator is one of those.
Aeration is an intimidating word that refers to something you’re probably doing already. Essentially, exposing wine to air—just regular air, the stuff you breathe—triggers some chemical reactions, which can sometimes have beneficial effects. Sulfites and sulfides, both naturally occurring and added for preservation purposes, can smell and taste a little unpleasant, and exposing the wine to air will lessen them.
Another positive benefit aeration can have is evaporation. You may have noticed that some wines, when you first crack them open, have a strong alcohol smell, almost medicinal and certainly not pleasant. Because smell and taste are so tied together, if you drink that wine right away, you’ll get too much of that ethanol flavor. Aeration, though, will cause some evaporation of that excess alcohol, reducing the smell and improving the flavor.
Not all wines, though, benefit from the kind of extreme aeration these gadgets provide. White wines often don’t improve very much, thanks to a lower quantity of certain chemical compounds. Very old wines will actually start to taste flat, fairly quickly, after being opened. Aeration is ideal for younger red wines, especially deep, earthy ones.
