When should I decant a wine?
This is an interesting question. There are a few obvious candidates, eg old Port, in fact any wine over 15 years old will probably throw a sediment in the bottle, so for optimum serving it is best carefully decanted. However with really old wine, don’t do it too long before serving, or the wine may actually suffer from the exposure to air and begin to fall apart.
On the other hand, young, tannic reds often benefit from a vigourous decanting, the air softening tannins and generally giving the taster a better impression of what they have to offer, making the wine less ‘tight’ in structure.