Hello Purple Pagers
I’ve been a member for many years but have never posted before. I’ll shortly open my first bottles of 2005 & 2006 Chateauneuf du Pape (Beaucastel 2005 & Vieux Telegraphe 2006) and I’m unsure whether to decant or not. I’ve researched this online for these wines and for other Bordeaux and I always find the advice very conflicting. So I thought I’d turn to the JR Community - what is your view? Have you had success or failure from decanting CdP (or not) before?
Extra info if relevant - Both wines were bought en primeur and stored in a mix of pretty good (but not perfect) conditions in my cellar (stable 18 degrees) and in professional storage. I expect these will be eaten with roast beef.
Hopefully this will be a helpful thread for other CdP owners, not just for these 2 specific wines! Thank you
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Hi Oliver, what a good pair of wines! There’s a simple answer, with a more complicated caveat.
The simple answer is: definitely decant. The complication is: how far in advance to do so. As you probably already know, decanting mature red is worth doing to separate sediment from liquid (although some believe that keeping the sediment in contact with the wine can be preferable, and that the last pours from a bottle are made better through this contact – I’ve heard this theory applied more to red Burgundy more than anything else).
Anyway, knowing when to decant – and therefore how much aeration time to give – is harder. Ideally, you would taste the wine in advance and judge for yourself how expressive the flavours are, and how tannic the palate is. If it already seems complex and well balanced, then there’s no need to decant before the point of serving.
But if you think the wine is closed and/or still grippy, then give it at least an hour in the decanter, or even more, since CNDP is robust enough to keep its structure. If you’re serving them in the evening, try tasting the bottles mid-afternoon, either with a Coravin or by fully opening the bottle. If no advance decanting is needed, reseal the bottle and keep it cool in the meantime.
My hunch: I’d give them two hours. I’m sure that won’t do any harm and it may well coax more complexity out of them both.
Enjoy!
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Thanks so much for taking the time to reply Richard. There are some super helpful tips here on when to decant - helpful beyond CNDP. Out of interest, would you follow the same approach with, say, “mid-table” Bordeaux too presumably?
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Hi Oliver,
You’re right that there’s conflicting information out there. In my experience, the issue is with Grenache. In general, it doesn’t take air well once it has gained significant age, by which I mean 15+ years. I attend a weekly wine group, where there’s a member who infamously decants his old Chateauneuf many hours before attending. We then find all of those bottles to be oxidised; usually badly.
Last year I joined in the party with a 2007, which tasted fantastic on opening at home. I decanted off the sediment and immediately back into the bottle. At the tasting group it still tasted good when I arrived, but on service an hour later, it had died.
Beaucastel is atypical Chateauneuf, because it is usually two-thirds Syrah and Mourvedre. In a great vintage like 2005, I’d be pretty sure that you’d be fine to have it in a decanter for an hour or two. For the 2006 Vieux Telegraphe, I’d be much more cautious. It’s two-thirds Grenache (admittedly less than the average Chateauneuf) and isn’t a concentrated vintage. I would decant it off the sediment, then back into a rinsed bottle, and serve immediately.
Best wishes,
Peter
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I’ll second that opinion on the ‘06 Telegraphe. I had a bottle on Christmas that I decanted early and left to breathe for several hours (as I regularly do with most reds). By the time dinner was ready, the wine had lost a lot of its zing. It was still good, but just seemed rather ordinary at that point. A disappointment, and the first red I’ve served that actually got worse in the decanter.
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