Summary

- Uncorking the pleasure
- Decanter and decantation
- The bishop
- ISO tasting glass
- Look, smell, taste

For many, wine is just a tasty liquid. But the Gods' nectar has a millenary story of devotion by those other who find in it more than a way of quenching the thirst. Because in a bottle of wine there is more than just a liquid: there is culture, history, passion, and pleasure. And a series of rites and ceremonies that make it similar to a proper religion.
Even the simple action of drinking a bottle, involves a complete set of gestures and precautions to be performed at best.
That's what we call the Ceremony of Wine: so, follow us and join the great church of wine!

Uncorking the pleasure
The disclosure of a bottle is like the profanation of a tomb: we know what we expect to find there, but we don't know in which conditions we will find it. It mostly depends on how efficacious was the barrier they put, long time ago, between the wine and the world outside.
The cap we're used to take out of the bottle comes from the cork-oak after a long course, because the tree needs at least 10 years to produce the cork. Once removed, it is left to sap for at least three months, then it is put to boil in order to put off the impurities. After this process the cork is left into cellars or other cool ambiences for some more months, and then cut into pieces of the shape we all know. We never think about it, but when we uncork a bottle, the cork is at least 12 years old!
The reason why we use the cork is because of its inner qualities: it is easy to produce, it is light, clean, smooth and, above all, elastic. The latter feature is indispensable if we think that, for example, the cork for a bottle of Champagne has a diameter of 31 mm and it has to enter a neck of only 17,5 mm.
The main task of a cork is not to let anything enters the bottle, except for small quantities of air. To help it achieve this goal, we have to keep its elasticity in form: that's why we take the bottles flat, so the wine can avoid the cork gets dry.
Once we have taken out the cork, possibly without breaking it, we have just entered the ceremony room: the first rite we perform is to smell the cork, which is the "door" of this room, to know if anybody entered it before us. The cork, in fact, has to smell of wine, or to have no odour at all: if it smells of cork, it means that the wine is compromised, because it has taken for sure the same smell. The fact is that the cork is a living thing and, as every living thing, can be sick. And if it is, it takes only few hours after the bottling to infect the wine too.
Recently, it happens more and more frequently to uncork the bottle and find that the cork is not a cork, but an imitator. These caps are made of a synthetic material similar to silicon, and they are highly debated by professional and drinkers. Is it good? Proofs say that, even if it is strongly less poetic than the cork, the silicon cap has two indubitable advantages: it's cheaper and it has no risks of sickness. It's too early to state it once and for all, but the majority agrees that the synthetic cap is a very good substitute for wines that are to be consumed within less than two-three years. For elders, the good old cork continues to be the best choice.

Decanter and decantation
The decantation is a rite absolutely necessary for those wines that have had a long ageing. Why is it so necessary? Because wine can have some deposits on the bottom of the bottle that, if mixed with the wine itself, could compromise its limpidity. The pouring of the wine from the bottle into the decanter also allows to oxygenate the wine that, after many years passed inside the bottle, needs air and to give off all its perfumes.
How it happens the decantation rite? Once uncorked the bottle, the wine should be poured slowly, avoiding abrupt movements: the wine, in fact, has to pass from the bottle into the decanter without gurgling.
To have the certainty that the deposits do not pass into the decanter, it is necessary to hold the bottle in the sunlight, in order to perceive when the dregs are getting close to the neck of the bottle and then stop immediately to pour the wine.
It must be said, by the way, that in recent years it is spreading the trend to let the wine oxygenate directly into the glass, without passing through the decanter.



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