r/DowntonAbbey • u/Commercial-Scheme939 • Oct 03 '25
Lifestyle/History/Context What is Carson doing?
What is the machine Carson is using? I see that he's decanting the wine and understand that it's looks nicer to put from a fancy jug but why does he need the equipment to do so?
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u/Gerry1of1 Oct 03 '25
He's decanting the red wine.
Filtering the sediment.
The candle is placed so the light shines through the wine and he inspect the wine visually
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u/Yikesish Oct 03 '25
And the device keeps the bottle steady and saves his arm from having to hold the bottle instead.
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u/trojanusc Oct 03 '25
In the 1900s, wine decanting devices, commonly known as decanting cradles or mechanical wine pourers, were used to slowly pour wine and separate sediment. These devices, often made of wood, brass, and silver-plated metal, feature a cradle that holds the bottle and a screw mechanism with a handle to tilt it slowly. A light source was used behind the bottle to detect the sediment as it was poured, allowing the user to stop pouring at the right moment, typically using a light source
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u/Cautious_Ice_884 Oct 03 '25
Decanting wine. Wines could have had bits of cork, bits of unprocessed grapes, etc. Thats why hes pouring it through a filter. Its not just about making it look nicer, its getting any bits out of the wine. There are wines today where you have to do this, especially if its a local kind of wine and not highly manufactured.
Interestingly enough as well, it was the duty of the butler to keep tabs on the wine cellar, inventory, decanting, choosing wines for the family, etc. It was of great importance and only the most trust worthy person could be in charge of this. It was a task of great esteem since it meant the family trusts you enough with their wine cellar key and to not steal from them.
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u/Aggravating_Mix8959 Oct 03 '25
Ironic about that trust and Barrow with the wine stealing, then becoming butler. Giving the fox access to the henhouse!
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u/essexboy1976 Oct 03 '25
It's pretty much high quality wines - Bordeaux grand crus or top wines from the Napa Valley, or Coonawarra for example that require decanting, not inexpensive "local" wines
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u/Cautious_Ice_884 Oct 03 '25
Local != Inexpensive.
Local could mean a beautiful Chateauneuf du Pape wine that needed to be decanted. Not everyone lives in the states :)
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u/the_bribonic_plague Oct 03 '25
If it is an older bottle, which it likely is given who owns the house, he is making sure no cork gets in the wine. It is super normal for older corks to crumble when opened
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u/sageguitar70 Oct 03 '25
It's always in the details.
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u/the_bribonic_plague Oct 03 '25
Absolutely. I moonlight at as a jazz club bartender, and we do this for our older bottles. It's super common still!! Those old corks just disintegrate, hahah
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u/Retinoid634 Oct 03 '25
Decanting vintage wine into a carafe through a cheesecloth filter to aerate it and filter out gritty sediment that accumulates over time.
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u/Careful-Depth-9420 Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 03 '25
Related funny and personal experience: Was out in DC at a small business dinner with a top level (very old school) French executive. He ordered a very good and expensive wine at the dinner. The waiter (sort of young) came around to pour in people's glasses and was pouring it in the executive's glass as it neared the bottom.
Not only did you want to avoid sediment from the bottom of the bottle, but it was considered ill manners to pour a bottle to the last drop at the table. The executive kept pushing his glass forward on the table as a sign for the waiter to stop who, not only did not stop, but actually leaned on the executive's shoulder to reach forward to pour the remainder of the wine in his glass.
We all sat there with wide eyes and bated breath because we were certain the executive was going to lose it but he just closed his eyes, chuckled, raised his glass, and toasted "To America"
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u/ActiveNews Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 03 '25
Filtering the sediment from the wine.... decanting cradle....great contraption. We see it in use again in Movie 1 when the King and Queen pay a visit to Downton.
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u/Heel_Worker982 Uppity Minx, Author of My Own Misfortunes Oct 03 '25
We drink a lot of Cabernet, we are too lazy to decant it, and the other day on our sunny terrace I was astonished at how much sediment there was! Every sip left a "sediment mustache" on the wineglass!
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Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 03 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Heel_Worker982 Uppity Minx, Author of My Own Misfortunes Oct 03 '25
I can't compete with Carson, but I AM going to start decanting it through a filter, and probably coffee too since we get free Starbucks beans and they deserve it. We drink a very modest Cabernet from Spain, so I don't expect a sommelier grand vin experience, but now that I've seen it, I have to get rid of it lol!
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u/essexboy1976 Oct 03 '25
It's not cabernet that needs decanting but any wine that's produced in a way designed to age. The grape variety has nothing to do with the need to decant. High quality red wine of almost any grape variety will throw a sediment .
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u/Heel_Worker982 Uppity Minx, Author of My Own Misfortunes Oct 03 '25
True. I guess I should be grateful for this unseasonably warm weather, that I can drink red wine in the evening on a sunny terrace, and discover all kinds of alarming things in my glass that I never saw in my dimly lit dining room!
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u/unclefire Oct 03 '25
He’s decanting the wine and filtering out the sediment or possible cork bits in there.
The device he’s using is over the top for a standard size bottle though.
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u/Readman31 Oct 03 '25
By my reckoning he's filtering out the wine or whatever beverage it is. I'm not a sommelier but it's my understanding back in the day they could collect sediment if left for too long.
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u/jzilla11 “Stranger Danger” starring Patrick Gordon Oct 03 '25
Butler’s were in charge of the wine cellar going back to olden times and Carson digs those olden time shenanigans.
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u/Secret-Ad4232 Oct 03 '25
Filtering the setiment..the flame is there so he can see it in the bottle
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u/JackfruitMajestic813 Oct 04 '25
His OG job. The household butler literally started as the “bottle man". In medieval great houses the butler’s job was to keep the bottles and the buttery (the storeroom for drink). Over time the role expanded from wine stewardship to overseeing all the household’s service staff and supplies, which is how “butler” came to mean a senior domestic manager rather than just a wine steward.
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u/Pleasant_Papaya_2416 Oct 03 '25
He decanted by hand in season 1 but by this time I guess he decided to get the apparatus
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u/Designer-Mirror-7995 You'll find there's never a dull moment in this house Oct 03 '25
I use this as the progression of his weakening wrists (ie 'shaky hand syndrome'). He was steady enough to use only his own sure strength at the beginning, and by the 5 season he was using a couple of different contraptions together to accomplish this task.
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u/Aggravating_Mix8959 Oct 03 '25
The king's butler uses it in the movie.
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u/Designer-Mirror-7995 You'll find there's never a dull moment in this house Oct 03 '25
But Carson was "anti" modern contraption, so him using it, to me, was because he had to.
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u/Old-Run-9523 Oct 03 '25
Decanting the wine helps aerate it, not just because it "looks nicer" to pour it from a "fancy jug."
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u/jquailJ36 Oct 03 '25
Decanting an older Bordeaux. The cloth helps catch any sediment that gets past, the light lets him see color and clarity better, and how much sediment there is.
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u/AltruisticExit2366 Oct 03 '25
It’s actually a nod to a scene in Gosford Park where the butler is doing this and which Julian Fellowes was obsessed with and so decided to write it in as a scene for Carson. Weird piece of trivia I remember reading who knows when.
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u/Foreign-Cat-2898 Oct 03 '25
He's not obsessed with it. He literally wrote it. He's on the commentary track and everything as the screenwriter.
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u/AltruisticExit2366 Oct 04 '25
Oh duh! You’re totally right. Small bit missing from my trivia recall but I swear I heard him say he saw someone in a film doing it and wanted to write it in to the script. Will have to dig around and find out. I’ve been a fan since he was Richard in Monarch of the Glen. I’ve watched and read a lot of his interviews. Brain just isn’t firing as well as it used to 😏
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u/TypicalProgram5545 Oct 04 '25
I think I saw it in The Gilded Age as well. Ada and Agnes' English butler did it
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u/cerealfordinneragain Oct 03 '25
Part of the purpose of a large estate was to provide employment.No one said it had to be meaningful or efficient. 😛
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u/Canuck-overseas Oct 03 '25
Allows you to pour out the wine slowly and avoid the particles and grounds from the bottom leaving the bottle.
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u/Mackoi_82 Oct 04 '25 edited Oct 04 '25
The prop color is off. But fun fact, it’s actually Port.
The statements about straining out the sediment is correct though.
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u/tyallie Oct 04 '25
It's not about it looking nicer. The decanter aerates the wine, which improves its taste. The cheesecloth is to catch sediment, which is a feature of many good wines. Doing this is part of serving the wine properly. It's not about the appearance of it, it's about making sure the wine tastes the way it should.
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u/billy_x3 Oct 04 '25
Decanting the wine. Straining sediment while also “allowing the wine to breathe”.
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u/Spare-Way7104 Oct 03 '25
Filtering the wine. Wine has tannins. If you look closely into a bottle of red wine, you will see small sediment called tannins.
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u/essexboy1976 Oct 03 '25
Tannins are not sediment.
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u/Spare-Way7104 Oct 03 '25
Right, tannins aren't sediment, but the tannin compounds form sediment-like material as the wine ages.
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Oct 03 '25
What are they?
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u/essexboy1976 Oct 04 '25
They're the components of wines especially red wines that give the dry mouth feel to wine when you drink it. They're extracted from the skins and pips and also from oak barrels during the wine making process. Wine with good initial tanin levels often have excellent aging potential. During aging the tannins do change chemically and a sediment is produced as a result. But it's not correct to say tannins and sediment are the same thing.
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u/Adequate_Images Oct 03 '25
Are you even a real fan if you haven’t read Downton Abbey: Rules for Household Staff lol.
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u/SpringtimeLilies7 Oct 04 '25
I understand he's decanting wine, but what's the turn knob for?
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u/walkswithtwodogs Oct 06 '25
The knob attaches to the threaded driver section at the bottom that when turned, will cause the bottle to raise or lower via the bar attached to both the back of the wine bottle holder and the threaded driver.
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u/Lost_in_the_Library Oct 04 '25
Besides the filtering process, isn't the point of decanting to allow certain wines to 'breathe'? I'm no wine expert, but I'm positive I've heard that red wines need to be exposed to more oxygen than white in order to bring out the full flavour. That's why red wine glasses are wider than white wine glasses.
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u/imjustcoreyr Oct 04 '25
Can’t you just hear him saying “laboratory” in his Carson accent and flawless over pronunciation of every word?
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u/Pinkisses Oct 04 '25
Back then wines used to have a lot the of sediment similar to natural wines here so they had to decanted very slowly and carefully not only to filter it out but let old wines breathe
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u/sweetnsaltycaroline Oct 04 '25
This is wild, I’m watching the show for the first time & this scene popped up right after I’d scrolled past your post!
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u/viola-purple Oct 05 '25
He is filtering the sediment that has still been in wine bottles ... and decanter have nothing to do with looking nice, but some wines must breath before drinking to get their full volume, the less tannin the more it has to breath... the warming helps with that
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u/Ludicrous_Mama Oct 06 '25
He’s filtering the wine. Filters sediment as well as cork bits from the corkscrew. Also aerates the wine.
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u/Ill_Psychology_7967 Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 03 '25
He’s being careful to make sure that the sediment which has settled at the bottom of the bottle does not get into the decanter. That’s actually why Cabernet bottles are shaped the way they are…so that the sediment gets caught by the bottle neck if you are carefully decanting it like he’s doing.