Aerating the wine
Breathing simply means allowing a wine to aerate before drinking it. Generally, younger wines benefit from some aeration; older wines do not.
Younger wines are, in relative terms, u p to young adulthood or roughly within the first 1/3 of their lives, which varies from wine type to wine type and from wine to wine. For most white wines, that means up to one to two years of age. For reds, younger could mean as little as a few months (for a Nouveau Beaujolais) to 10 years for a hearty Napa Cabernet Sauvignon.
And older wines are those in the last one-third of their lives, however old in real terms that might be.
During aeration, the exposure of younger wines to air often “relaxes” the flavours of the wines, and makes them taste slightly smooth and better integrated in smell, texture, and flavour. Wines that are older generally fade (lose character and flavor intensity) with extended aeration.
Breathing doesn’t benefit all wines. And it can be taken to an extreme: Some people insist on a period of one hour or more for aerating wines. My feeling is that a wine should be tasted as soon as opened to determine how long it might be aerated, if at all. Then retaste the wine again every 15 minutes, until you feel the wine is ready to drink, according to your taste.
As a general rule, younger white wines normally require no more than 30-60 minutes of aeration; younger reds (and younger fortified wines) no more than 60-90 minutes. If in doubt, aerate the wine less rather than more than you think appropriate, since a little extra time in the glass is preferable to having lost, through over-aeration, some of the best nuances of aroma and flavour a wine has to offer. It is always better to err on the side of too little aeration, than too much.
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