Home

Can a blender turn plonk into a fine wine?

31.12.69

The blender trick has been getting some ink in the press lately. For this we can thank (or blame) Nathan Myhrvold, former top technology executive with Microsoft Corp. He’s a mathematical genius, not an appliance technician, and his interest in this matter of great human importance springs from his love of food and wine. (Dr. Myhrvold would take long leaves of absence to study at cooking schools in Europe, as I recall from my days as a technology editor.) He also is co-author of the recently released Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, a $500, six-volume reference that’s garnering great reviews and has established him as a star in the world of molecular cuisine (potato foam, anyone?).

He calls the blender trick “hyperdecanting,” sort of like hypertext’s answer to wine. I call it a wine smoothie. Pour the bottle into your Osterizer, switch it to high for 30 to 60 seconds, then wait for the foam to subside. The idea here is to aerate the wine aggressively, vastly accelerating the process accomplished by a decanter, which is just a wide pitcher. Exposure to air can improve the flavour of most wines, though if the wine is left out for too long (hours or days) in a decanter, it will spoil, of course.

Source: Globe and Mail

Will blendering a young wine help it taste mature?

31.12.69

THE ANSWER

Readers of last Friday’s newsletter will recall that I addressed the subject of "hyperdecanting" wine in a kitchen blender. This is the technique whereby you can soften and improve the flavour of a young wine by aggressively frothing it on the high setting of your Osterizer (or any other blender) for 30 to 60 seconds. The idea is to accelerate the wine’s exposure to air, rounding out the astringent tannins and enhancing the wine’s fruitiness. Hyperdecanting is just a fast alternative to old-school decanting, which involves pouring a wine into a pitcher and letting it sit around for a few minutes or hours to mingle with air.

In my experience, decanting is not a surrogate for long-term cellaring. You’ll get a potentially more complex flavour profile but your young Chilean cabernet won’t suddenly taste like a 1982 Bordeaux. As wine ages, aided by slow exposure to air through the porous cork, the chemical transformation is much more elaborate. It may in fact taste less fruity than it would have had you opened it soon after bottling, but that fruitiness can give way to so-called secondary and tertiary notes, revealing an underlying earthiness. With some red wines you’ll be able to detect notes of leather, tobacco, mineral and forest foliage, for example.

Source: Globe and Mail