Once upon a time – not so long ago in the scale of geological epochs, but somewhere between Margaret Thatcher and the smoking ban – no self-respecting English household was complete without a decanter.
Stout ones, slender ones, heavy-bottomed crystal numbers that could fell a burglar if lobbed with force. They glinted like chandeliers on sideboards across the shires.
A visiting bishop could hardly lower himself into an armchair without being offered ‘a little Amontillado’ from a decanter that looked as if it had been looted from Versailles.
Remember the marvellous scene in Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), when the Reverend Lord Henry D’Ascoyne desperately asks Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price) for the decanter: ‘My Lord, the port is with you.’
And now? Decanters are gone. Practically. As endangered as the pangolin or civility in the House of Commons.
Decanters emerged a century or so after the glass bottle (first used for wine in the early-18th century). That evolved from the leather bottle, which might have been practical to transport but probably didn’t do much for the taste of wine.
Back in the 18th century, glass was expensive, and wine was bought in wooden barrels. Corks hadn’t been invented, really, and the concept of wine improving with age was unthought of.
It wasn’t until the 19th century that a bottle became something to be laid down for years, and it was necessary to separate the clear bright liquid from the sediment that had formed.
Modern wines aren’t made like that any more. It is said that 94 per cent of all wine, red and white, is drunk within a year of the grapes being pressed.
Vintage port and the very best clarets are the main exception to the rule. Many of the top Burgundy-producers have long questioned decanting, worried that the delicate flavours of their wines didn’t need the aeration the process affords. The decline has been as slow and insidious as the erosion of the House of Lords.
I think I own a decent proportion of the few decanters left in captivity. I have my father’s collection, many of which were from his father before him: Georgian and early Victorian beauties, surely free of any harmful lead content by now; magnum decanters, half-bottle decanters; beautiful wedding presents, often engraved with initials, dates or wayward tendrils of the vine. Every one with a story.
Decanting wine is, above all, an act of performance. It requires foresight, elegance and the physical dexterity of a bomb-disposal expert.
I once saw a Japanese sommelier decant a bottle of port using red-hot decanting tongs, and it seemed straight out of Kabuki.
There’s the setting of the scene – the silver coasters, the ceremonious pulling of the cork, the gentle glug-glug-glug as the liquid flows through time and tradition. And now? We’re too busy watching Scandi noir and arguing about oat milk to bother.
But all is not lost. Hope remains. A small but brave resistance survives – mainly Oldie-readers, I suspect. Buckingham Palace has one of the finest collections of Georgian decanters in the world, and I hope they are still used regularly.
So here’s my plea: dust off your decanter. Polish it. Invite a friend over and decant something – port, claret, Vimto … it hardly matters. Perform the ritual. It may not solve climate change or reform the BBC but, by God, it will feel like civilisation again.
And who knows? Perhaps, in the flickering candlelight of a decanter’s glint, we might just remember who we are. Or, at the very least, remember where we put the corkscrew.
Simon Berry was Chairman of Berry Bros & Rudd, the wine merchant founded in 1698
