No indication that the wine was tampered with, though I didn’t focus on this when opening the bottles. I will pay more attention when opening any other bottles.
Since every bottle you have opened so far has been “oxidized,” there are minimal reasons it could have happened. If all the bottles are oxidized, they have all been exposed to the same conditions, most likely, heat. The alternative is the dry ice did it, and I’m not buying that. If you continue to open oxidized wine, do it while googling weather, brown outs, black outs at the storage location. Rent should have included insurance on your property, unless the storage place didn’t insure it. (Expensive). We will not hold the wine of others at our facility because insurance against mother nature is double or triple what it is for flood, fire or theft. There may be fine print on the storage agreement that states the storage place has no responsibility for damage caused by acts of mother nature.
As I noted, a cork drying out is about humidity. If it’s arid and the bottle is on its side or neck-down, a dried out cork may lead to seepage. I’d suppose a bottle stored neck up in arid conditions would be more vulnerable. (I did have an old wine that was stood up in my cellar for a few weeks have its cork shrink and drop into the wine. The cork had been saturated and degraded, so normalizing back to a regularly safe humidity was less than adequate. Luckily, there was also a thick gummy mold or whatever, that had formed between the cork and capsule, and the wine was fine.)
With normal humidity I don’t see a problem with a wine stood up for a few years. There’s probably a very small risk in that, since cork is a variable product. On the other hand, if you start trying wines that have spent significant time in a refrigerator, which is a very arid environment, you will find some of them have oxidative damage.
Some interesting points being made about bottles stored upright in arid conditions. However, if this were the case I would expect this to have a considerable impact on the ullage of the wine. What are the levels like? Unless they’re noticably low I don’t think this would be a likely cause of your problems. Was the wine cloudy at all, yet still quite dark in colour? If so, that would be another sign of travel shock (it can also be a sign of heat damage but then I would expect it to have a significantly lighter and matter colour than expected as well).
More likely is that the sediment has been knocked about significantly during transport and that the equilibrium of the gasses in suspension/headspace have been knocked out of whack - travel shock, bascially. Despite Alan’s misgivings, I have personal experience, from a number of occasions, of that fact that this can last for a very long time for bottles that have reached a certain stage in their life cycle; bottles of the age you describe are particularly prone to it from the type of ordeal they have been through.
This is a bit more concerning, I think. Can you see evidence of this on any of the other bottles? If so, it may be down to a single or persistent heat event(s) (and/or long term storage issues). However, I would still not expect this to damage every single bottle,ncertainly not without significant visible signs - wines are a lot more robust than we give them credit for. Many can brush off a dozen years of abuse as if it were nothing at all, given sufficient recovery time, particularly at this relatively young age (with 50 year old bottles it is of course a differnt matter).
I’ve driven some wine for hrs at a time and haven’t had any issues. Here’s my 2 cents. I’d be pretty confident that your storage facility had some type of an issue 1/2/3x which caused temps to soar for a long ( wine) period of time. You should ask this facility how many blackouts the area/ they’ve had during the time you had your wine there, get a record of the area and if they had blackouts that caused power outages and did they have some type of generator or backup in case of that. If I had to guess I’d say the wines were cooked if this was the theme over and again while tasting. Sorry about the wines. That sucks.
Thanks, I will compare a new bottle of wine with one from those stored to check the ullage. Hope you are right about the travel shock.
I have never heard of “travel shock” (if such a thing even exists) causing oxidized aromas in a wine. That doesn’t make sense at all. I know quite a few people who believe in travel shock, and none have ever said it causes oxidized aromas. Clearly this wine has been heat damaged. It won’t recover.
Great idea, if you have one lying around. I’d also suggest holding it up against a lamp to check the colour to see if there’s any difference. Perhaps you could post a picture of it?
Whatever the case, I am certain that transporting the wine under the conditions you deceibe cannot have damaged the wine. If they don’t come around they were damaged (most probably by heat) in storage.
One final thing; if you’re opening another bottle I would suggest keeping it upright (vertical with the cork up) for a few days at least (preferably a week if possible); this is particularly important given that they have been stored neck down, so the sediment will have collected in the neck. Probably not that important in a year’s time but for now I think the vertical storage might be amplifying the affect of the travel shock.
What Doug says here and Alan says above. I regularly drink samples that have just travelled across the country and I have never experienced the “travel shock” some discuss. Certainly, with an older wine that is throwing some sediment, the wine may be less than ideal, but it certainly would not be oxidized. From what you describe, your wines were in good shape prior to being placed in storage and your transportation did not compromise them. The wine merchant has some explaining to do. If, for example, he or she went on a summer vacation and did not have someone “minding the store,” a problem with the temperature control would have been enough to ruin your wine and the bottles may not show any evidence of it.
Did we ever ascertain whether you had a way to monitor the temp in the trailer? I find ambient weather temp a poor indicator. Many days the air temp is 68 or 70 and yet the tenp inside my car, parked on the street for a couple hours, rises to 80+ inside. And it’s light grey, not black.
The sun can make a sauna out of anything it beats on intensely enough and for long enough.
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your palate is shot.*
Were there signs of heat damage–wine on labels, pushed up corks and capsules, etc.?
Did you place the wine yourself in a locker for which you had the key? In other words, proof that your wine was at the facility.
Anyone else who stores there have an issue?
Do they have a verifiable time log?
*I am kidding.
I drove from mid evening all night until around 9:30 am, so very little direct sunlight hitting the trailer. I monitored the ambient temp using the external temperature sensor in my car. I ocassionally verified that it was correct within a degree or two when passing by illuminated time/temp signs encountered as I passed through towns on the journey. The high temp was 80 degrees for a couple of hours well after sundown. The temp during that period inside the trailer would have been lower given that I had placed 40 lbs of dry ice in open containers inside the trailer.
One bottle I opened had wine stains on the label. My recollection from the process of tranfering the wine to my home storage is that it was an exception in that regard. None of the bottles I opened had pushed up corks.
The wine storage company picked the wine up from my house. The next day I left the country and hadn’t seen the wine again until I picked it up in early June. I learned the day before my move that my company’s shipping policy limited me to one relatively small box for air shipment and that I filled with 50 bottles from my collection (all were fine and drank well in London). I called the most well known wine seller in my area, relying on their size and notoriety in quickly contracting with them for storage. I know of no one else who stores with them.
Is it typical for a storage facility to keep a log? I will ask about it - thanks.
Never choose a vendor based on Notoriety.
Could it have been ruined during its initial transportation into storage?
Steve sorry you have to go through this. You indicated one of the labels showed signs of seepage. I’m wondering if the bottles were stored upside down, how would a label show signs of seepage? Unless it was from a neighboring bottle? Not doubting your statement at all. More a question about the storage method…
Good point. I’ll check the unopened bottles tomorrow, but if memory serves, this may be the only one or one of only a handful with a stained label. If so, it may be that the stain is unrelated to whatever may have affected the entire collection.
Thanks to all for the thought that has gone into trying to solve the riddle of how my wine was damaged. The most likely cause seems to be exposure to high temperature. I picked up the wine in Minneapolis around 4 pm on June 12. According to weather records the high that day was 82 degrees, presumably close to mid day. The day was cloudy with some rain, so the trailer wasn’t exposed to much direct sunlight. The highest ambient temp I read during the trip was 80 degrees somewhere in Nebraska late at night. There was 40lbs of dry ice in the trailer to moderate the temperature. Worst case, I believe the wine would have been at 75 to 80 degrees for 8 hours before temps fell lower in the early morning and the higher altitudes of Wyoming and Colorado. Would this have been enough to cook the wine?
Definitely not.