The Wall Street Journal's wine FAQ

For nearly 11 years, the Wall Street Journal has been running a wine column. Here are their top 11 most frequently asked questions:

7. Should I decant? Generally, no — at least, not at first. We enjoy tasting a wine from the first sip to the last and it will get plenty of air in those big glasses while we swirl. If we taste a wine and it's so tight that it needs decanting, we can decant; if we decant first and then find that the wine lost some fruit to the air, there's no going back. (Of course, if a wine needs to be separated from sediment, that's another matter.)

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3. Why does wine give me headaches; sulfites, right? Wrong. Sulfites cause very severe allergic reactions in a small number of people, even death in extreme cases, which is why there's a warning on the bottle, but sulfites don't cause headaches. Wine headaches are a serious issue, but the causes are highly personal. Some people get headaches only from red wine and some get them just from, say, German wine. It has to do with histamines and all sorts of other complex science. It really is best to talk with your doctor about this.

3a. But wines in Europe don't have sulfites, right? Wrong. All wines contain sulfites (it's a natural byproduct of the winemaking process) and almost all wines contain added sulfites, all over the world. It's just that the U.S. has required a sulfite warning for many years and Europe started doing that more recently.

Actually, when I'm serving red wine at home, I almost always decant . . . even the cheaper stuff. It certainly allows young wines with harsh tannins to become a bit easier to drink, and an hour of decanting allows some of the tightness to ease off. I've been told by some that decanting is a waste of time, that it's a cargo cult relic from the imagined days of greater refinement in manners, but if it is a placebo . . . I find it works on me.