Dropped bottles

Wine 101: The Basics
1

Hello,

This evening I dropped 5 bottles from about 4 feet and at first I thought I was lucky that three survived. I now question the integrity of the bottles and wonder if it is also possible that the impact stressed the glass enough for there to be pieces of glass in the bottle.

Drink up or leave them be? Should they be filtered with a cheese cloth (worst case coffee filter) before drinking?

Thanks

2

It might be the bottles that broke took the brunt of fall if they were in a container together and the other bottles aren’t damaged, just got the Molly Dooker shake or the equivalent shaking of ground shipping across the US. You can use a pen light to look through the other bottles. Any glass inside should give off some refracted light. Even if you don’t see any glass inside, I would still slow pour the wine into a decanter, just like you would with an older or unfiltered wine to keep the sediment (and glass), in the bottle.

3

Unfortunately when the bottles fell they were not in a container and it was just 5 bottles tumbling down 4 feet of metal steps to concrete.

I’ve gone ahead and removed the bottles from storage so in the unlikely event the temperature drop (shipment arrived today) caused them to break they will not leak into the locker below mine. I’ll make sure to be careful when drinking.

Thanks Randy

4

Peter,

Only 2 out of 5 broken in that scenario is pretty good. Must be a reputable wine maker using good glass for their wine. I’ve had bottles tip over on their side and shatter.

5

Tap the glass to see if the ring is resonant. If not, there’s a crack.