Regardless of what your most annoyingly opinionated friend says, there’s no singular, correct way to serve wine (can you drink wine out of a water glass? Yes, yes you can). Whatever you think is the right way to do it, you can find an article that will confirm you’re right and one that will indignantly tell you you're wrong. Writing as a person who sometimes walks into a wine store and says, “cold please!” I don’t have particularly strong convictions about the matter. I have learned enough about wine to understand how decanting can impact the drinking experience of a particular vintage though. And a good wine decanter is something worth having, even if you’re a casual drinker.

A couple of our favorite decanters

A handblown beauty made from recycled glass:La Riccia Pinch DecanterA decanter that provides a bit of show:Audo Copenhagen Decanter

Decanting wine involves pouring out a bottle into another vessel. There are a couple reasons to do this; one is to separate out the sediment from the bottom of the bottle, the other is to aerate wine. Aerating, i.e. exposing wine to oxygen, softens the bitter tannic flavors and allows the aroma of the wine to bloom.

I’m not going to litigate exactly how important those aspects are to enjoying any particular bottle of wine, but I am still a fan of decanters and you should be too. Wine decanters are shaped to maximize air exposure, and some really take this prompt and run with it, often with some particularly creative design results.Not only will a cool decanter make your wine more pleasant to drink (probably), but it will also serve as a functional work of art on your dinner table.