A Quick, Easy, and Inexpensive Way to Improve the Taste of Cheap Wine

The Shortcut, a quick hack video series from Slate, demonstrates a very quick, easy, and inexpensive way to improve the taste of Two Buck Chuck or any other cheap wine that needs a bit of help. In one word, aeration. Although, according to Dr. Vinny of Wine Spectator, the fastest aerating method isn’t always the best way.

But to me, it’s really quite simple. Open a wine and pour yourself a glass. If it seems like it needs some more air, you can decant it, or just enjoy watching it evolve in your glass. Will putting a wine in a blender aerate it? Absolutely. Faster? Sure. Better? I’m not so certain. It won’t make a bad wine magically good, and a very delicate older wine might have only a brief period—a matter of minutes—when the wine is in full bloom, as opposed to a younger wine, which could bloom for hours. Hyperdecanting could miss that magic moment, just as decanting it too soon would.