The glory of the 4oz/5oz tasting bottles. 79 Heitz Martha's opened 10 days ago - still drinking as good as when opened.

Opened a 1979 Heitz Martha’s 10 days ago. Poured into decanter for sediment around 3pm - decanted back into the clean bottle 4 hours later at 7pm. Drank from 8pm-12am. Had 6oz left in the bottle so poured it into a 4oz boston round and left it in my fridge.

Just got to it tonight and it’s still as youthful and wonderful as it was that night.

My initial notes that night - Still very fresh and present throughout the night. Odes of beautiful piercing eucalyptus and bright red fruit. The palate was structured and broad, still needing to fully fill out the frame but the tobacco, pencil notes, pepper and red cherry and sweet plum were still present and persistent. I really love 1979 Napa - the wines are so structured and built to age but have this core of flavor that shows its stuffing. The final pour of the 4oz bottle was the most aggressive and present fruit. Crazy that it kept opening up with each 1oz pour.

tonight - the mint is ethereal and gorgeous and the fruit is still bright and present. THe palate still has that tannic undertone with those secondary bordeaux notes coming through but the fruit profile is soft and plush red fruit. Like with a lot of great 60s/70s Napa there’s a weight of fruited liquoure on the finish that keeps it persistent. The acidity is clean adds to much life and purity to the fruit.

I’ve been rolling with these 4oz boston rounds since roughly mid April of 2020 for our virtual zoom tastings and they’ve been absolutely awesome. (posted about here back in mid april How to share the same bottle of wine with friends across the West Coast - Covid 19 style - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers (I’m actually really surprised how well they’ve taken off. I see people all over doing these bottle sample zoom tastings nowadays. I feel like a proud papa)

https://www.bottlestore.com/4oz-flint-boston-round-glass-bottle-bulk-pack-22-405-neck.html (I buy 160 at a time since we go through 36+ bottles each zoom tasting and this price is the best price at that quantity)

If by now you haven’t jumped on the train, not sure what you’re waiting for. This beats Repour, Coravin, etc etc.

Dont need 160 bottles. What has others used that worked well in lower quantity?

just go on amazon and buy a smaller batch. 4oz boston rounds + polycone cap

I am a bit suprised this works so well. In this case, you double decanted a wine and slow o-d it for 9 hours… so plenty of air exposure… and then simply poured it into a smaller vessel with limited air… and everything was perfect? What surprises me is not that it works, but that this is only a potential thing now in 2020, versus the past 500 years. I’m just shocked that it was not used widely earlier, given I know there are pre-COVID board posts that refer to this method working… but little widespread adoption… and even folks freezing wine instead of this method.

As an aside, an implication is that the effects of decanting are generated from surface area contact, and not the actual act of decanting a wine (i.e., introduction of air while transferring wine between vessels)?

This feels worthy enough for a WB trial. A dozen or so WB each take a 750ml, pour out 1 large glass for immediate consumption, one 4-6 ounce boston round, and the remaining ~1/2 bottle stays into the bottle with a Repour… and then tested against each other 10 days later.

My friends and I bought these after I saw you use them, and they are pretty perfect. We’ve forgotten about some wine in the bottles at times for 7 - 10 days and it’s almost always still good, even if slightly declined a few times. Lockdown wouldn’t be nearly as enjoyable without these little bottles.

The wine needed every bit of air to begin with. It didn’t really hit its stride until 6 hours post opening. I wouldn’t say it was slow ox’d, it was poured multiple times, so the impact of the wine moving up and down the bottle also creates air exposure. So once you toss it into the little bottle you’re basically limiting oxygen exchange and attempting to keep it in that state at 40F (or below).

To me the idea isn’t that different from what cognac, scotch, wine producers do that want to stop aging and putting the liquid from wine barrels into glass containers.

I don’t know why it wasn’t more popular until I posted about it back in April, but I’m glad it took off. I see it all over Instagram now and all over the world.

p.s. I already did what you suggested re testing. A repour doesn’t even hold a candle to this method. My local tasting group was using Repours extensively before this and they’ve all stopped. No one believes me until they try it. Then they try it and never go back.

I had Todd join us in a tasting and he would not believe what I was telling him until he did the tasting.

pps edit - if it’s good enough for master somms and advanced somms training for master somms, it’s good enough for me!

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Agree with this but for one caveat—would not use this for more natural-styled wines. Have done this with a couple wines (Prieure Roch rouge and Foillard 3.14) with an initial natty-ness (to varying degrees) that developed very strong natty-ness in mini bottle.

I had an 18 Lapierre sans soufre in the bottle for 8 weeks that didn’t show increased mousiness in the bottle. I’ve done a fair number of natty reds with this and shipped them across the country and they haven’t shown mousy except for a bottle of 18 Gahier which was terrible, but it was pretty terrible before I bottled it

Right now i have 3 4oz of 15 Ooka Cornas that’s been sitting in the fridge for 3 weeks, so definitely will test that right this moment. Will update ya’ll in 30 minutes when it warms up. It was already getting pretty mousy before I bottled the last half of the 750

A couple notes:

  1. This has been noted to work before precovid. Lots of people say open a bottle pour it into 375ml and it keeps.
    Same concept except better seal. Also more useful since covid = less large group drinking :frowning:

  2. The 4oz btls doesn’t reverse decant impact
    I see it as just sealing a wine in its place once it’s bottled.
    So if it’s pop/pour it’s like a fresh pour.
    If u decant it for 8 hrs, that’s the state that gets locked in place.

I’m happy to hear the ‘79 Martha is giving pleasure…paid a pretty penny at auction for a couple of these as birth year wines. I hope my bottles show as well as this, and thanks for the insight into ideal decanting time, I would be concerned to miss the peak if I just let it decant 4-6 hours.

79 napas in general are in need of more time/air. I bought a 6 pack of this awhile back and have been slowly opening them. THey’ve all needed a significant amount of air to show. Something about this vintage holds so much structure with youthful fruit.

We’ve been doing it with a Bay Area group since mid April as well. Pretty sure Daniel got the idea from you [cheers.gif]

I too have been impressed with how well almost all of the wines have shown, having done it a couple dozen times now. I do think storing them at fridge temp is important. It really slows down reactions that degrade the wine. You know my feelings about slow-ox, I think our cumulative experiences support that :wink:

that’s a real trick. Negative ullage!

Can someone help me here. What’s the difference between reduction and oxidation and why does reduction resolve?

Second, I tried this several years ago with rinsed out 6 ounce prosecco bottles. The wine didn’t taste fresh the next day. Was it because of the seal or was it just reduction and I should have let it air for a while before drinking? I poured a lot of wine down the drain before I got my coravin.

Not sure what the seal is like on your Prosecco bottles. These are filled to the top with a polycone rubber top that will displace a little liquid to take away airspace (think overfilling).

Also I usually take them out and air them for 30-45 minutes. They sometimes are too cold and/or have a reductive element.

this doesn’t really surprise me and makes me think that we can extend a lot of wines for a long time. a good friend brought a 375ml flip cap type bottle of 1999 lambrays to dinner 2 weeks ago. it was from december. it was totally correct.

At the most basic level, reduction and oxidation are the opposite things of the same phenomenon. The redox potential of a wine is increased by oxidation and reduced by the absence of oxygen, i.e. “reductive conditions”.

In very reductive conditions, wines start to develop smelly sulfur compounds and these wines are normally said to suffer from reduction - so reduction is in reality a chemical phenomenon, but “reduction” in wine speak is just a shorthand for the presence of sulfur compounds that might appear as a result of reduction. Wines can also be said to be “reductive” when they are made in the absence of oxygen, i.e. in reductive environments (say, stainless steel tank), even when they are not showing any obvious reductive qualities - just the lack of oxidative qualities.

Just like in reductive conditions, different compounds start to develop in oxidative conditions as well. However, most of the compounds formed in reductive conditions are normally volatile, i.e. they can be blown off by letting the wine breathe either in a decanter or just by letting the bottle stay open for awhile. Only if the wine is extremely reductive, it can develop very heavily skunky mercaptans which really don’t blow off even with prolonged aeration and these wines can be considered faulty, not just suffering from minor reduction. Similarly the changes that happen in oxidative conditions are also irreversible - if a wine oxidizes, it can’t be fixed by moving it into reductive conditions. This is why a wine like Madeira can be both reductive and oxidative: it is first vinified in a heavily oxidative manner, after which it is transferred into a bottle where it is kept for decades in a reductive environment.

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Yep—I bought some, but my wife won’t let me use them.

Awesome, I just ordered my first 12. While I usually finish a bottle in a couple of days, vacu vin isn’t so great past that.

Has anyone found a good tray or carrier that works for 4 or more of these in the fridge? I don’t really want to get in trouble w the rest of the family for annoying them with my many many little bottles they also have to live with…

I assume becasue it’s in the fridge, amber is no better than clear?