Explain Like I’m Five: The Method to Your Madness in Standing Wines Up Before Consuming

As I’ve been building out my cellar/wine collection since the 2004/5 vintages were hitting the shelves, I’m finding myself with a cellar that is starting to come into some level of maturity (woohoo). As a result, I’m finding more and more that my wines could benefit from standing them up before I drink them, but my problem is that I’m terrible at planning ahead. While I recognize that there are no hard and fast rules in the wine game, I am looking for some “Cliff’s Notes” takes on how you approach standing up wines before consuming, specifically things like:

• At what age do you consider standing the wine up a “requirement” for the optimal experience?
• How long should it be stood up for?
• Do you treat all wines, grapes, colors etc equally, or do you find certain ones benefit more/less than others with a healthy standing up?
• What else?

This topic crossed my mind last night as I decided to pop and pour a 2005 Pavelot La Dominode straight from the rack to go with take-out sushi at home. The wine needed (unsurprisingly) a few hours to really start unfolding and, while it was enjoyable, I had this strong feeling it could have tasted “cleaner” had I planned ahead and stood it up ahead of time, but I had no idea if that was a 1-hour, 1-day, 1-week etc proposition. After a quick search I didn’t see any threads dedicated to this topic so figured I’d start one.

So….explain like I’m five how you approach this topic please.

10+ years i’ll stand em up if they are reds. I’ve become accustomed to standing up wines a week or two ahead for reds and then double decant at my storage facility.

You could also just bring them out from the side and carefully put them in a wine basket as well to serve/double decant. But that’s just one extra bit of potential for jostling the bottle.

I’ve become super anal about this. One of our groups - everyone stands up and double decants before dinner (since it’s mostly older burgundy), but it’s not uniform. I thought a 99 bachelet charmes and 96 leroy beauxmont this past week were sub optimal cause they got shaken up like crazy while people were pouring and moving bottles around where the bottom half of the bottle was not enjoyable.

I’m far from an expert, but at least have an approach to share…

I keep 10-20 bottles stood up in an “on deck circle” if that makes sense. It can help me decide to drink something, vs just looking through necks and wondering what I might enjoy in a given evening. I think it’s unlikely that standing up for a few months before drinking anything I have (similar age as you mention) will hurt anything substantively.

If you have the comprehension of a five-year-old, you shouldn’t be drinking alcohol. Sorry, I couldn’t help it. [rofl.gif]

You don’t have to worry about standing the bottle up if you treat it properly when handling it. The act of standing it up is to get the sediment to fall to the bottom of the bottle so the act of decanting it results in little-to-no sediment ending up in the decanter. However, most of that sediment is stuck to the side of the bottle. So when you remove it from your cellar, so your best to not jostle it at all. Very gently rotate it to upright so that you don’t slosh the wine and dislodge the sediment. Then open it gently and decant it gently as well. This works very well for me.

What Charlie said!

I always have a “triage” area, either in the house, or the cellar, with 8-12 bottles of red standing up that I know I will drink in the near future. That way you have different wines ready for different foods & moods. After you’ve drank a few of them, refill that area with a few more. That way you always have something ready.

I’m with those who don’t stand the wines up but will carefully remove the bottle keeping it in the same position with minimal jostling and decant from that position.

Of course this is only for older wines where you suspect there might be a noticeable amount of sediment.

HA! I was waiting to see who’d take the bait first…as a big believer in the “keep it simple stupid” mindset, and a father of two little kids, I find that if you break a concept down into terms simple enough for a 5-year old to understand, you get the salient points across without needlessly overcomplicating matters. This topic seemed tailor made for that approach, plus I have the reading comprehension of a five-year-old. [snort.gif]

Really appreciate the responses so far…

You know, Fu is a wine influencer.

My approach is similar to Andrew’s and Marshall’s. I don’t want to decide on the first of the month that I’ll be drinking a particular bottle on the 23rd, I want to be able to decide that day or a couple of days before. But I also want to stand them up for a good while beforehand. So I will go through my inventory and choose a few bottles of each type that I cellar that I want to drink soon-ish, and take them out of my racks and put them in cardboard cases standing up. So even if I only decide on the morning of the 23rd what to drink that night, and if I decide I want Italian that night, I have 5 or 6 that have been standing up for a few weeks or months to choose from. When the supply gets low, I’ll replenish.

I’m not super freaked out by sediment. That being said if I’m sure a wine is likely to have a lot then I will try to stand it up ahead of time if there is an event afoot.

For home and in the moment it’s obviously different. As with the above responses I just try to keep the bottle on one side, turning it up slowly for opening. Decant if much sediment is expected. But pouring it gently and slowly off the bottle is usually enough.

Have you considered getting a wine cradle? Higher end restaurants use them for this exact reason…

This is me, but I see the point on much older bottles that will throw a lot of sediment, say Bordeaux 25+ years old.

My son probably got the following lecture when he was 5, but he’s been helping in the cellar since he was 3 or 4, so I’m giving you explanation to a very specific, knowledgeable 5-year-old…

First off, there’s no specific age at which the sediment suddenly appears, so I always will have a look at the wine to decide if it has sediment that requires any sort of special treatment. Assuming I find evidence of that, then it comes down to how much I’m planning versus just having wine with dinner. If I’m not running on impulse, then I will stand a wine up at least 3 days in advance of consumption. When on impulse, if there’s not much sediment, impulse continues and I go with it. Otherwise, I select something else to drink and stand up the first selection for consumption a few days later.

For wines that will travel outside of my care, I try to avoid selecting high-sediment specimens unless they can be given a few weeks after shipment.

The whole sediment screwing up the wine thing seems more pronounced in aromatically-driven wines, with red Burgundy being the example I would use to demonstrate how a great experience can be muted by sediment due to mis-decanting/mishandling.

Cheers,
fred

…Or like you’re a golden retriever

I just stand up the ones that are most likely to throw massive sediment, and I’ll end up decanting anyways. I’ve got a bottle of 1990 St Estephe standing up now for consumption sometime this weekend for example.

Worst sediments I’ve ever seen - like something out of an old Chevy oil pan - were the 90’s era Gallo single vineyard cabs. Barelli etc. The bottom inch of the bottle were basically undrinkable!

I stand up nebbiolo wines of more than 10 years of age for a few weeks, and like others have a bit of an on-deck circle. I think it is especially critical for nebbiolos due to the super fine (and nasty) sediment that develops. I don’t worry about it as much for other wines.

Even if you don’t think you’ll get to a wine for a while, but you think you will drink it sometime, keep it standing up. I’ve had no problem with wines that were standing 6+ months to a couple years in my wine fridge.

Been using a wire mesh filter to catch larger pieces of sediment on pours of older reds. When I get to the bottom 1/3-1/4 of the bottle I am using the unbleached coffee filters. This worked well for an 84’ Spottswoode I had two weeks ago.

another vote for the “keep it in the same position and decant from there” camp

old wine is like muddy water—dirt in water. Stand the bottle up and the dirt goes to the bottom. Carefully pour off the clean wine.