Bad batches?

So I got a bad bottle of wine the other night. Likely the sulphur fault. It was drinkable I suppose but barely. So I took it back to the retailer and they exchanged it. And I was stupid enough to buy the very same wine. I should have known that it likely came from the same batch. Right? I mean say the X Brand 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon are generally form the same batch from the producer right? So all those bottles on the shelf, if one is bad, may very well be badl right?

Likely the sulphur fault? What please tell is the sulphur fault? Too much? Too little? Not to your liking? Didn’t eplode when you held a match to it?

Hydrogen Sulphide.

Sulfur issue can be individual bottle issues. Could be barrel issues. Multitude of things.

Every wine I’ve been involved in bottling is racked into large tanks and homogenized before bottling, not really “batches” there.

And the span of your experience and influence here…is…?

Lol, true, but in the time I’ve worked where I have, we’ve bottled 30 different wines for 7/8 different producers and so far everyone has done it this way. I’ve also asked and it seems to be very common. I only have experience with what I have experience with, but is bottling directly from barrel common?

Just giving you a little elbow back for your correction on my Carneros fruit hanging post [cheers.gif] . Sounds like you are getting some intensive experience, Nolan. We blend my Black Cat from the individual barrels into a tank for the Special Selection, and into another tank for the “regular.” That’s the only way I have ever done it.

I have actually wondered about this as well. I mean small producers winemakers with 300-500 cases can certainly maintain a constant taste. But look at the caymus thread. They produced like 100,000 bottles or some crazy number. There is no way they can keep it consistant, right? Its no wonder they are all over the board.

Not at all. I don’t know if Caymus somehow dropped the ball, but even large amounts of wine are blended together before bottling by the vast majority of wineries.