(no subject)

[aroraborealis]

Can you aerate wine by shaking it?

Comments

[motive-nuance.livejournal.com]

Depends on how it started out. I very rarely drink any wine that isn't either 'pre-bruised' due to being quite young to begin with, or bruised due to having been recently transported to the store and then to my place. If I bought well-aged wine that I knew had been treated well, I'd be much more careful about letting it sit around for a while. But the clever little aeration devices that a number of my friends use are almost as likely to bruise a wine as a good shaking.
Similarly for sediment. If you have a good red that you know has been treated gently for a few months, then it's probably settled quite a bit, and would benefit from a gentle decanting.
But if you just bought a young red wine from the store and it seems a bit harsh, by all means shake the hell out of it. A couple of my friends and I did a (single blind) experiment on this once, and determined that while it was clearly better to just let it breathe for a bit, if you're in a hurry, shaking can give a better result than not.