How long should wine breathe?

This helpful tip comes from Columbia Winery’s own wine educator, Steve Vernon: Open a bottle of red wine and let it breathe for $1 a minute before drinking. What does that mean exactly? A decent $15 bottle of wine should breathe for 15 minutes. A more expensive $60 bottle of wine should breathe for an hour.

Vernon also notes that decanting is a double-edged sword–decanting speeds up the time needed to let a bottle of red wine breathe … but the subtle bouquet escapes with the decanting.

More tips coming soon. Cheers!

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About Margot

Margot started writing about wine decades ago as a national journalist in Canada and the U.S. She and Dave created this website in 2007. Originally, the website introduced people to wines in Washington state, the second-largest wine region in the U.S. But over the years, the site expanded to feature other wine regions in the U.S., Canada, and in the world. If you like to read about standout wine and winery stories, then Write for Wine is for you.