I was just about to decent a 78 Mouton I planned on bringing to an offline and to my horror saw the fill was a little below the bottom of the shoulder. No signs of seepage. I have not much experience with old Bordeaux and bought from a local store over a year ago. Is there any possibility the wine is any good and is there any chance the retailer will take it back unopened. I am not a regular customer and don’t recall checking fill when purchased. I have temp controlled storage and not a drop leaked out on my racks. What would you do ?
Jonathan,
I’ve had some Mouton from the 40’s and 60’s with lower fills than that and it was completely fine. Might have been luck but I don’t believe that the lower fill (without sign of seepage) is a death sentence. I doubt you will have much luck returning the bottle to the retailer as they will say you should have checked the fill before purchasing. If you have a Coravin you can check it before taking to the offline that way if there is an issue you can bring a different bottle. Best of luck and hope it shows well for you!
BDX can handle some ullage generally speaking. On the day of your offline,
pull the cork and smell the wine, if it has no "off " aroma put a fresh cork in the bottle and stand it up in your fridge and then take it with you to your offline and decant it at the table, if you think it is sub par when you pull the cork decant the bottle at home and give it up to 3 hours to pull itself together then decant it back into the original bottle (that you have cleaned and dried) and pop a cork in it and put it in the fridge until its time to head to the offline
These types of wines can sometimes be good and sometimes not so good. A couple of years ago, I took a chance at a 1970 Cheval Blanc at a really great price selling at that price because the fill was quite low. When I opened the wine (before leaving for a restaurant (with backup bottle)) I decanted the wine and was not sure if it was any good. But the time we got to the restaurant this was a pretty enjoyable wine. Probably not as good as it could have been but still awfully enjoyable and a steal for the price.
Note, if the cork is pushed out, much less chance that the wine is good. Then it probably is heat damaged.
I say go for it and bring a backup bottle in case it does not work. It won’t get any better.
My primary concern for your bottle is the unknown provenance. You bought it a year ago and so its storage conditions since release may well have been less than ideal. Yes you can success with badly ullaged wines, but I would say that this generally occurs when there has been very good storage and the ullage is consistent with bottle age. I would say that this is a high risk bottle, but you never will know until you try it…
Like others said, bring a back up. I would not decant it either.
Brodie
Older Mouton is really hard to find with solid fills. So many bottles have low fills, it’s just kind of par for the course. If it was below the bottom of the shoulder though, that’s pretty concerning and probably not a great bottle.
Hi Jonathan,
Fills below the shoulder are not necessarily a death sentence for an older Bordeaux and I have had many that were excellent and entirely on form, despite low fills. The way to feel more confident is to shine a flashlight through the bottle where you can gauge the color of the wine. You want to see brilliance to the tone- no matter how pale it might be- as this is a good indication of whether or not the low fill was related to poor storage or not. Wines stored too warm are going to be dulled and often slightly brown tinged at the meniscus. And, it is sadly all too easy to clean up a bottle with past seepage if it has not stained the label. But, that said, the decade of the 1970s was far from great at Mouton, as the wines generally were pretty light for the estate and rather sinewy in profile, so even if the wine turns out to be well-stored (and just a low fill), you would want to expect a good, but not great wine. Not sure why Baron Philippe pushed so hard for First Growth promotion all those years, finally was promoted in 1973, and then seemed to take the rest of the decade off to celebrate its promotion…