8 Coolest Wine Decanters to Show Off That Great Bottle You Just Bought

Regardless of what your most annoyingly opinionated friend says, there’s no singular, correct way to serve wine (can you drink wine out of a water glass? Yes, yes you can). Whatever you think is the right way to do it, you can find an article that will confirm you’re right and one that will indignantly tell you you’re wrong. Writing as a person who sometimes walks into a wine store and says, “cold, please!” I don’t have particularly strong convictions about the matter. I have learned enough about wine to understand how decanting can impact the drinking experience of a particular vintage, though. And a good wine decanter is something worth having, even if you’re a casual drinker.

A couple of our favorite decanters

Decanting wine involves pouring out a bottle into another vessel. There are a couple reasons to do this; one is to separate out the sediment from the bottom of the bottle, the other is to aerate wine. Aerating, i.e., exposing wine to oxygen, softens the bitter tannic flavors and allows the aroma of the wine to bloom.

I’m not going to litigate exactly how important those aspects are to enjoying any particular bottle of wine, but I am still a fan of decanters, and you should be too. Wine decanters are shaped to maximize air exposure, and some really take this prompt and run with it, often with some particularly creative design results. Not only will a cool decanter make your wine more pleasant to drink (probably), but it will also serve as a functional work of art on your dinner table.

Take a look below to find some of the coolest wine decanters available to buy online. Each one has something unique going for it and are destined to elicit praise at your next dinner party.

Holcomb Birdie Glass Wine Decanter

The decanter by Holcomb Studios gets its name from the stainless-steel aerator shaped like a badminton birdie. Like the rest of Holcomb’s homewares, there’s an almost sci-fi edge to the look of this decanter. It comes with an ash wood trivet and a small metal coaster to put the aerator on after you’re done with it. It’s a smart modular design that looks just as cool in action as it does on passive display.

Alessi Eugenia Wine Decanter

Alessi has been around for over 100 years, but the Italian housewares brand continues to manufacture modern yet cheeky designs of nearly anything you’d find in the kitchen. This wine decanter is frankly understated for Alessi (compare, for example, to this coffee maker), but its exaggerated angles evoke the midcentury retrofuturism they are known for.

La Riccia Pinch Decanter

There’s a charming rough-hewn and organic quality to Il Buco Vita’s handblown glassware. Each decanter is different, with slight undulations and curves on the surface that celebrates the artisan process required to make them.

Fazeek Vice Versa Carafe

Australian brand Fazeek was founded in 2017 and makes all sorts of cheery, brightly colored glassware. This is technically a more all-purpose carafe, but the design makes it suitable for decanting wine as well. The glass sphere stopper lives underneath the cavity in the base of the piece. Don’t worry, though, there is a little flat spot on the stopper so it won’t roll away when you lift it up.

CB2 Sofia Smoked Glass Wine Decanter Gianfranco Frattini

This decanter is an original design by the architect Gianfranco Frattini, who created them for use in haute Italian dining establishments in the 1980s. The smoked glass version is a contemporary riff on the classic shape, and gives it a more sultry evening vibe.

Audo Copenhagen Decanter

The coolest thing about this decanter is how it decants. You place the entire decanter on top of the bottle of wine before inverting them both. The wine cascades around the inside of the glass surface as it pours out the bottle, which not only aerates the wine quite effectively but gives your dinner guests a bit of a show.

Maison Balzac

Why is there an orange slice on top of this wine decanter? Why not? Maison Balzac’s thing is quirky and fun glassware, and it’s probably best known for its little glass fruit motifs. Some of the brand’s designs are more decorative than practical, but this decanter can definitely go either way.

Ichendorf Milano snail glass decanter

If you like a dose of whimsy in your life, then Ichendorf Milano will be your speed. The borosilicate glass vessel features a small snail climbing up the side, and there’s a little glass twig too. Fragile? Perhaps, but c’mon, it’s undeniably cute.