Friday, August 29, 2008

Happy Birthday, Jeff!

Today is Jeff's birthday! Our oven is still non-functional, but his lovely employees bought him a birthday cake to bring in to work, so I'm off the hook! We enjoyed a nice dinner together of prime strip steaks, salad, garlic bread (baked in the toaster oven), and a lovely Hermitage that I started decanting at lunch today. Aren't you impressed at our advance wine planning skills? I am... this is actually the first time we've attempted decanting anything for more than, oh, 2 hours, and we're quite pleased by the results. We were a bit worried that we'd ruin the bottle by doing this, but it turned out to be fantastic.

Here is a picture of the birthday boy, his cake and a random airplane part:

5 comments:

Jackie said...

and now i'm wondering what is decanting and why do you do it? i mean i know what a decanter is but i didn't know there was a process to it and what the purpose is...

Jackie said...

oh, and happy birthday, jeff!

Jeff and Michelle said...

Hmm, decanting can be done for a couple of reasons. The first would be to pour the "clean" wine out of the bottle into a different vessel, and trap the sediment in the wine bottle, so you don't have to drink the grit that falls out of wine as it ages. The second reason would be to give the wine some air, or to basically let it breathe. As wine ages, it takes on different nuances in the smell and the taste. When you expose it to more air, it essentially speeds up the aging process, and can make a young wine develop some of those aged wine characteristics. Hopefully that made some sense. :)

Chuck said...

I must admit I am usually to lazy to give a nice bottle of wine the time it deserves to breath - but then again I am usually too cheap to buy the good bottle. Man the truth hurts sometimes!
:O

Kansas said...

Yeah, bottles of wine are pretty much just decoration at my house. I buy them because the labels are cool. I think I'll stick to just good 'ol beer. Nothing better than a good 'ol Porter or Stout... and no decanting necessary!