The wine will seem heavy and produce a burning sensation on the palate. What would otherwise be construed as richness will appear sickly sweet and the wine's acidity will seem aggressive. For all these reasons, it is best to serve wines as close as possible to the ideal temperature for tasting.

Dry white Alsace wines 12°-14°
Pinot noir 14°-16°
Alsace Crémant 8°-10°
Vendanges Tardives, Sélections de Grains Nobles 10°-12°
Old Vintages

Special precautions are required when serving old wines because they have been enclosed in their bottles for a several years. If such a wine is tasted immediately after opening, it will not display all its aromatic potential. It may even sometimes give off a bad smell, which specialists call « reduction ». Therefore we recommend you air it by opening the bottle a few hours before serving or indeed by decanting.

Which Wine should be decanted ?

Decanting softens the more exuberant aromas in some young wines and encourages those that remain closed to blossom by bringing the wine in contact with the air.

Use a flat-bottomed decanter for young wines and pour them in quickly in order to air them as much as possible. A more mature wine should be poured slowly and delicately into a round decanter so as not to spoil it.

There are no hard and fast rules :

The situation can be radically different with two bottles of the same wine from the same vintage. It is up to you to decide !
• If you like the wine as it is from the start, serve it from the bottle.
• If it is very young and a little « agressive », half-an-hour in a decanter is likely to improve it.

If the wine to be tasted is already a few years old and seems « closed », one or two hours in a decanter should be sufficient for it to open up.

Be careful with a very old vintage. Decanting may waken it up, but if it is already over the hill you might kill it off altogether !