Most people don’t realize that wine is a bottle of slowly reacting chemistry. That’s because most folks don’t hold onto wine long enough for the chemistry to make a significant difference. I heard a statistic that suggests 90% of all wine purchased in the U.S.A. is opened within 24 hours of purchase, and up to 98% is opened by month’s end. So, fewer than 2% of wine purchases ever get to experience the wine aging process. For those of us who do age our wines, the results can be amazing, even surprising. At a Monte Bello barrel tasting event at Ridge Winery in 2007, they were pouring their 1994 vintage of Monte Bello to give purchasers of the 2004 vintage an idea about how their investment will age. I must say that the 1994 Monte Bello was holding up quite well. But one thing the employee pouring the wine pointed out was that each bottle aged uniquely, even bottles retrieved from the same 11-year old case. One bottle had pronounced mineral notes, another had lighter body with floral notes, while the third had dense fruit. What can cause this?
Although winemakers strive to produce the purest wine possible, the smaller, more specialized operations also favor less human intervention in the winemaking process. Rather than filtering wine to get the most usable juice, these winemakers allow the juice mixture to settle and then take all but the last few inches, leaving behind most of the debris that is a part of making wine. This can include grape skins, grape seeds, stems, bits of leaves, and other debris. If any of these particles should be siphoned into a bottle, those bits become a part of the chemistry that happens inside the bottle once the cork is punched down and the bottle is allowed to rest. Even the cork itself (or the screw cap) can affect the wine’s development. Some winemakers lack the facilities to blend the juice from all of the individual barrels into a single tank before bottling, which can lead to differences that can be tasted when the wine is still young. Another important factor is temperature, and while two bottles in a case of wine may be stored at the same temperature, each bottle may experience different temperature effects over time based on proximity to the edge of the case and proximity of the case to the edge of the shipping palette. It goes without saying that two bottles aged in different individuals’ cellars will likely turn out differently. Most of the time, these differences are noticed in the nuances of the wine. (At tasting competitions, three or four bottles of the same wine are often combined before serving to the tasters to avoid such bottle variations.) On rare occasion, the chemistry in a particular bottle can go wrong and produce very undesirable results.
When a young wine comes out bad, some retailers will want to confirm your experience and may offer some kind of consolation. Be sure to save the bad wine and re-cork it – don’t toss it down the drain – so that you can bring a sample to the retailer. Personally, I find that wine that is a little off still helps create a tasty marinara sauce, so I keep my wine failures in the refrigerator for cooking. As for aged wines, there is little that any retailer can do to help you. The wine is likely years past when it was last available for sale, and the retailer has no way of confirming that the wine was properly handled during its time in the bottle. So, there is some risk involved with aging your wines, but I think the benefits make it worth the risk and the effort.
More on this topic can be found at: http://tercerowines.com/2010/02/bottle-variation-whats-the-story/
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