9 Stylish Wine Decanters

Give your wine a breath of fresh air with these party-ready carafes and decanting vessels.

By Adam Campbell-Schmitt

March 20, 2019

Each product we feature has been independently selected and reviewed by our editorial team. If you make a purchase using the links included, we may earn commission.

For most meals or casual evenings at home, pouring wine directly from the bottle suffices while having a glass or two. But for dinner parties, brunches, and cocktail attire-worthy soirees, serving wine in a decanter, usually made of glass or crystal, can give your best bottles an added boost of flavor and drinkability. While bottled wine is already sealed inside glass and behind a cork or a screw top until it’s meant to be enjoyed, giving wines (especially older or tannic reds) a breath of fresh air by pouring into a glass decanter or carafe can bring it to life.

Here are the reasons you should decant wine, according to Food & Wine Executive Wine Editor Ray Isle:

It’s old. Older wines tend to have sediment accumulated at the bottom of the bottle. Pour these wines slowly into a decanter and you’ll avoid getting those gunky bits in your glass when you serve it. Plus, many decanters have a bulbous lower half and skinnier neck that further keeps floaters from creeping out.
It needs oxygen. To get the fullest expression “as the wine interacts with air, the aromas come out, the flavors blossom, it makes the wine more delicious,” Isle says. Use a confident, heavy-flow pour to expose as much of your wine to the air as possible, as it travels from bottle to decanter.

While any clean vessel you can pour a whole bottle of wine into will work for the purposes of getting it properly aerated, here are nine super stylish containers designed for the job: