Hyperdecanting: Better Wine In A Minute

Love wine but don’t have the time, patience, or inclination to aerate your wine in a decanter forever before drinking? Former Microsoft CTO and master chef Nathan Myhrvold suggests a method he calls “hyperdecanting”. Sounds fancy and high-tech, right? It’s basically shorthand for “put your wine in a blender for a minute and it’ll taste better”.

Just about anyone who enjoys an occasional glass of wine will initially recoil at the idea. (I did.) Wine has an almost mystical quality for most of us and surely only an unsophisticated fool would dump a perfectly good bottle of wine into a blender. But Myhrvold takes a scientific approach to food, the culmination of which can be found in his insane $US450 book Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, and in an article last year in Bloomberg Businessweek, he explains his method:

I just pour the wine in, frappé away at the highest power setting for 30 to 60 seconds, and then allow the froth to subside (which happens quickly) before serving. I call it “hyperdecanting”.

Although torturing an expensive wine in this way may cause sensitive oenophiles to avert their eyes, it almost invariably improves red wines — particularly younger ones, but even a 1982 Château Margaux. Don’t just take my word for it, try it yourself.

In his article, Myhrvold goes on to suggest how you might set up your own blind taste test to “determine with scientific rigour whether your tasters prefer the hyperdecanted wine”. While we haven’t given hyperdecanting a go just yet, decanting is a common practice, and at least in theory, hyperdecanting seems to make sense. A few folks have documented their hyperdecanting efforts, including all-things-four-hours author Tim Ferriss, a hyperdecanter who uses a submersion blender.

The wine-obsessed people at Vinum Vita tried it out, too (video at the top of the post) and at least seemed to agree that it changes the flavour of the wine.

Ever hyperdecant your wine? Share how it worked for you in the comments. As for us: We’ve got a (cheap) bottle of wine waiting to be blended this weekend.

How to Decant Wine with a Blender [Bloomberg Businessweek]


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

Here are the cheapest plans available for Australia’s most popular NBN speed tier.

At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments


7 responses to “Hyperdecanting: Better Wine In A Minute”

Leave a Reply