Caring For your RIEDEL Decanters
How to Clean Your Decanter
As an avid wine lover, a great decanter is a must-have. But if you feel it’s too much hassle to clean after use, your decanter might be getting neglected. In this simple guide, we’ll demystify this process so you can use your beloved decanter more often, for wine enjoyment!
Regardless of whether you have a wine cellar stocked with ageing beauties or drink your wines young, a decanter can elevate your drinking enjoyment.
Traditionally only mature wines were decanted, in order to separate sediment and gently aerate a wine held captive for years in a bottle. However, decanting young wines allows them to open up and reveal more complexity, aromas and flavours.
To decant a mature wine, slowly pour the wine into the decanter without allowing any sediment to leave the bottle. If possible, decant your mature wines at least an hour prior to consumption.
In a young wine, we recommend the opposite: turn the bottle upside down and let it vigorously splash into the decanter, ideally producing a thick frothy head. A young wine will benefit from decanting a few hours prior to consumption unless you are using one of RIEDEL's double decanting pieces!
We have a lot more information about this in a different blog; click the button above to read.
- Decanters should always be washed carefully. Most RIEDEL decanters require handwashing only, unless any other care/cleaning instructions are explicitly indicated on the respective product detail pages on our website. You can find a list of all decanters in our Product Range overview with detailed information on the respective product detail pages. If your decanter is not listed, please contact our customer service team.
- If you are washing your decanter straight after use, it should only require water. Depending on the hardness or quality of your tap water, we’d recommend using distilled water as highly alkaline water can cause cloudiness. Distilled water also doesn’t have any aroma or contain minerals, which will help prevent watermarks when drying.
- Take care not to knock the spout of your decanter on the tap as this can cause chips. If your decanter is too tall for your sink, you can also try your laundry or bath tap!
- Avoid using dishwashing soap or detergent in your piece, as it can be very difficult to remove all traces.
- If you’ve enjoyed a couple of bottles over a dinner party, we recommend rinsing any leftover wine out of your decanter and upending a bottle of carbonated water (such as soda water) into the decanter to sit overnight. Rinse this out in the morning, with a steadier hand!
- If the design of the piece allows, rest the piece upside down to dry on a tea towel, or rest atop a tea towel over a dish drying rack. The tea towel will help to protect the decanter’s spout from chipping on the rack, while still allowing the decanter to aerate to prevent condensation.
- If your decanter cannot be stored upside to dry, remove as much water as you can and leave to air dry out of the cupboard. In this instance, the decanter may contain some patches of condensation; before its next use, simply rinse again with some water or, better yet, with a little wine to condition the piece.
- Use a RIEDEL Microfibre Polishing Cloth to dry and polish reachable areas of the decanter, for a perfect sparkling finish.
- If you have not used the decanter in a while or it needs a bit of TLC after frequent use, we recommend our RIEDEL Bottle Cleaner or other cleaning beads, which are tiny stainless steel beads that remove dirt, residue, sediment, and superficial stains from inside the decanter.
- Simply fill the vessel with water, add the cleaning beads slowly and carefully through a funnel into the decanter and swirl them around for about two minutes. When you're finished, carefully empty the beads into a mesh strainer, rinse the pellets well, and dry them. If dried and stored correctly, the beads can be used many times.
- Attention! Please be aware that cleaning beads and our customer service team.
- For persistent red wine stains, fill the decanter with white vinegar and soak until removed, then rinse well and dry as above. For particularly stubborn staining, we recommend using denture cleaning tablets. Dissolve the tablets in water as suggested on the packet, and soak until the stains are gone. Rinse well and dry as above.
RIEDEL offers a wide range of elegant decanters, with a piece suitable for every lifestyle and price range. Both our handmade and machine-made decanters are produced in high-quality crystal glass.
RIEDEL’s handmade decanters are all individually crafted by our master glassmakers using original blown glass techniques dating back 2000 years, so each piece is slightly unique. The expertise of our master glassmakers guarantees that the quality of each product meets the Riedel brand's high standards.
Click here to view our full range of decanters, or check out some of our most popular pieces below!
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