Decanters

Decanters

— decanters are specialized carafes used for professional wine serving. The classic decanter has a narrow neck and a very wide base, shaped like an inverted mushroom; however, in modern models, the difference in the width of the base and the neck may not be so pronounced. Decanters are not equipped with stoppers in principle.

When serving mature wines, a decanter is used to separate the sediment that forms in the bottle (subject to all the rules, part of the sediment is separated even when poured into a carafe, but some of it inevitably remains in the wine). The shape of the container allows you to carefully pour the wine into glasses, leaving the sediment in the decanter. When serving young wines, the decanter is designed for “accelerated maturation”: the container with the drink is actively swaying, due to which the wine is saturated with oxygen and actively oxidized. This process can take up to several hours.

Also, whiskey bottles are sometimes called decanters, but this is not true: it makes no sense to carry out “procedures” similar to decanting wine with whiskey, and in fact such vessels are just classic decanters.