One More Newbie Oak Question (Sorry)

Second time this has happened to me over the past six months. Tried a cab at the winery with a few years on it (1998 in one case, 2000 Saturday night). Quite nice at the winery tasting-lots of rich fruit and some lovely savory and secondary notes. Splurged.

Open another bottle later=VANILLA. The dreaded Vanilla

Am I simply not decanting it long enough? Have I become hyper-sensitive to the dread Vanilla. The bottle I served Saturday night (a 2000 Bordeaux blend with a good dose of Cab Franc along withn the usual suspects) was briefly splash decanted and swirled around rather vigorously. Others at the dinner enjoyed it, but many of us preferred the Italian Sangio-Cab blend I posted tastingn notes on.

Am I just being impatient with the decanting? Help! I'm doubting my ability to taste wine at wineries and pick the good ones out! (Although-this has not luckily happened too often).

It is a weakness of mine that I buy wines after tasting them, and then discover they are too oaky. Otherwise I think I am pretty good at identifiying wines at tastings that I like to drink afterwards. I put it down to some sort of tasting-fatigue effect.

depending on the number of visitors to those tasting rooms, the wine you tried may have been open for several days. if more that a few hours it certainly is possible that a freshly opened bottle will taste differently. IMO most CA wines - but esp. chard - do not seem to absorb oak the way cooler climate wines do. cab is slightly but not entirely different.

Steve-that seems to be the problem for me, too. I'm going to have to maybe let the oak blow off for a longer period of time-maybe that will help.

Over time, one learns the producers that donj't overoak, but....

Am I just being impatient with the decanting? Help! I'm doubting my ability to taste wine at wineries and pick the good ones out! (Although-this has not luckily happened too often).

Brian,
You're not just being impatient with decanting, your being impatient with wine. You're not supposed to be perfect at this; you're supposed to learn as you go. And learning the things you do well and the things you don't do well is part of the process.
For me, I never buy a new wine on the strength of a single pour. I have made too many mistakes that way and I will never be Rbt. Parker. So I buy a bottle and take it home to have with dinner. That way I get to try it over the entire evening, with and without food, with air and right out of the bottle - only then am I comfortable buying more than one.
By doing so, I have cut down a lot of my buying mistakes and I have cut out all those bottles that were too expensive to buy a bottle to try. The result is that I have a lot of wine I like and I didn't have to spend top dollar to get it.
So don't worry too much about decanting, or single taste sensitivity, or anything else, for that matter. They're all a lesson you have to learn to get a perspective on what you are good at and what you really like.
Best, Jim

Thanks, Jim. Good advice.