The Art and Science of Decanting

Why decant wine? A lot of people think its sole purpose is  to artfully separate the wine from any sediment that may have formed.

But there is also another reason to decant wine and this is to do with science.

 
And that is that decanting wine allows smelly trace components, known as thiols, to oxidize to form compounds (disulfides), which have an aroma that is much more difficult for humans to detect. These thiols will be removed or destroyed by the oxidation process after being exposed for one hour.