One common question my students ask is about "letting the wine breath." Conventional wisdom has it that a red wine should be allowed to stand open for an hour before drinking.
Sorry, the surface area of the open bottle is so small that not much can really happen. Pouring a small glass to allow the level remaining in the bottle to be larger helps; but the best bet is to pour the entire bottle into a decanter or pitcher.
For red wines, the theory is that the bitter tannins in red wine will mellow by exposure to air. This is true. But winemakers in large commercial wineries usually avoid bitterness problems by employing techniques such as micro-oxygenation - sort of like the aerator in an aquarium - to let the wine breath before you ever open it. They are also not above sweetening the wine to cover the bitterness.
So, in fact an hour or more of breathing will probably help white wines more than red. Why? Because white wines are bottled with more sulfur than red wines to prevent discoloration and to increase shelf life. That sulfur will blow off fairly quickly once sufficiently exposed to air and the flavor of the wine will be greatly improved.
David Creighton, News Special Writer