Why is breathing necessary before wine drinking?

Date: 2014-01-21 From: 管理员 Print Font size: LargeMediumSmall

During storage, wine is nearly under anaerobic condition though with micro-oxygenation owing to the air permeability of cork. Wine under anaerobic condition is liable to generate a kind of unpleasant reduction smell. Therefore, it is advisable to open the bottle half an hour or one hour before drinking, so that unpleasant reduction smell can disappear rapidly after large-area contact with air by the wine, tannin softening is accelerated and the enclosed fragrance can be fully released. Such a process is called “breathing”, generally known as “breath”, while breathing is mainly for long-term stored wine.