How to let wine breathe

Letting wine breathe means exposing it to oxygen before drinking it. There are various reasons you might want to do this for your bottle, and also different methods to achieve results depending on the age and style of your wine.

What are the benefits of letting a wine breathe?

If you’ve ever left an opened bottle of wine overnight and noticed that it tastes better the next day, you have experienced the benefits of letting a wine breathe.

Letting a wine breathe emulates the process of ageing, where tannins slowly soften and aromas and flavours develop over time.

One key benefit is if you want to drink a youthful red wine – exposure to oxygen will help to soften those tannins and help it to ‘open up’ and reveal more flavours and aromas.

You can let white wines breathe before drinking too, but you will get more benefit from doing this with complex whites such as Puligny Montrachet or Alsace or German Riesling, rather than a wine that’s designed to be drunk in its youth such as Muscadet or Ne

how long should wine breathe before serving

how long does wine breathe