Wine closed? Buzz it in a blender!?

[Robin Garr]

I just got an Email wine letter from a guy named Michael Green, who appears to have serious wine-scribe credentials, which makes me wonder if my memory is going away since I don’t recall having read him before. Anyway, I like his style, and after the necessary moment of wine-snob revulsion at the idea of running good wine through a blender, I realized that it probably makes more sense than investing in any of those pricey breathing pourers or magnets and crystals and such.


What do you think? Would you try it, to open up a severely shut down wine on short notice?

... perhaps the most practical thing I've learned in the last year?

Does it blend? Sometimes you just need to put your red wine in a blender.

Yes, a blender.

Now, you can go ahead and yell "heresy!" You can say that a KitchenAid screaming at 80 decibels takes the romance out of wine; that an essential part of the experience of enjoying wine is the patience of allowing a wine to age naturally in the bottle, or gracefully in a decanter. And I don't deny any of this. Trust me, I love decanters!

But in a pinch (or at a party of open minded friends), there's no denying the speed, the showmanship, and the shock factor, of hyper-aerating your wine in a blender.

I had my doubts, but I've tried it several times now, and the effects are real and immediate. Thirty seconds in a blender changes the taste of wine - dramatically - achieving essentially the same results as allowing oxygen to interact with the wine in the more peaceful surroundings of a decanter.

Now, for a romantic evening, for a reflective moment? In my book, there's nothing that can replace the elegance of a decanter to set the mood. But even in a romantic evening, wine in a blender can have its place.

Picture this: you have a date coming over at 8:00. You've prepared for hours. Everything is perfect. You've cleaned every speck of dust in the place, you've got the lighting just right, you've cooked what will be the most delicious meal of your date's life. You've chosen a wine that you know will, with a half hour or so to breathe, be the perfect wine for the evening.

You forgot to open it, let alone decant it.

It's 7:58.

Time to panic? Not at all. You reach for the blender with one hand, the decanter with the other. You open the wine, pour it into the blender, and hit puree. Thirty seconds later, your wine is ready to drink. Your pour it from the blender to the decanter, placing the decanter in the center of your candlelit table just as the doorbell rings, and voila! Your evening and your love life have been saved. So this year, make yourself a resolution you can keep. Be open minded to the unexpected, the unusual, the drastic. I suggest you start by putting your red wine in a blender.


http://michaelgreen.com/party-trick-wine-in-a-blender/

Seems to be a connect with Riedel? I would think the wine would become cloudy if blended.

Well, the 30 seconds advised is considerably shorter than the 3.5 minutes that TomHill unfavorably reported back on (admittedly for a different purpose)

I read an article recently from Huff Po that looked at hyper aeration (the blender technique) and compared it to decanting and in-the-bottle aerators.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/0 ... 32696.html
They ultimately decided that the aerator didn't really do much and the traditionally decanted was their favorite, but the hyper-decanting actually had a significant effect on the wine. Now personally I don't completely trust them as a source, looking at their comments on how each tasted (which it doesn't seem they even did blind) they doesn't seem like the most scientific/professional notes. Example, for the traditional decanted: "The sweetest and most 'frothy' textured of the bunch." and "Drier, somehow less sweet, definitely different." for the same wine. The comments on the hyperdecanting consist of "Much drier than #1, but it somehow tastes cheaper and has a sweeter aroma."

As for the technique itself, it has pretty legitimate origins - seems to have been developed by Nathan Myhrvold, author of "Modernist Cuisine." Myhrvold is clearly an innovator with a taste for the modern and an eye for elegance. In an article on the Modernist Cuisine website (http://modernistcuisine.com/2013/12/imp ... -a-button/) they purport to have performed "carefully controlled, double-blind taste tests" on the technique, with 14 seemingly quite qualified tasters (soms, vintners, wine writers, etc.). Tasting hyperdecanted wine versus traditionally decanted over several trials, only 2 of the 14 were able to distinguish the hyperdecanted from the traditionally decanted, and both actually preferred the hyperdecanted. The article is well worth a read.

Personally I find the above quite convincing that the technique is at the very least worth a try. I have yet to myself, but I think I very well may sometime in the nearish future.

I would think the wine would become cloudy if blended.

From the Modernist Cuisine article, it doesn't seem to get cloudy, but does get some foam that dissipates in a few seconds.

I often hear of this technique but I would never run a nice wine through my blender. Do you know what has been in there

I might do the Mollydooker shake http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xTw6nOj80k

Jason

Let's see, the friendly UPS gent shows up with my shiny new case of wine which I dutifully lay down in the cellar for 3 or 4 weeks so that the poor dears can recover from their harrowing "bottle shock" experience. Having served their "time out", I pop a bottle and pour it in the old Sunbeam for 30 seconds of sheer terror, something wrong with this picture

I might do the Mollydooker shake http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xTw6nOj80k

When I...er, when this "friend" of mine drinks Aussie Shiraz I... er, my "friend" just double decants it an hour or so before drinking. "He" says that it opens the wine up quite nicely.

Disclaimer: Of course, being a member of the WLDG I would never admit to... I would never drink one of those delicious... er, fruit bomb Aussie smoothies.