Bottle Variation Question

I am so intrigued by how varied folks are with respect to specific wines that I am curious as to your takes on bottle variation.

There are a number of reasons why there might be serious bottle variation from a newly bottled or released wine as follows:

1. If the bottling is large enough, there might actually be variations either because of the same wine in different tanks that are supposed to be identically blended but perhaps were not OR bottlings done over separate days from different tanks or even the same tank if it is not gassed correctly

2. Bottles that are shipped to different locations across the country and that experience different shipping temperatures.

3. Wines that are bottled unfiltered and subject to different provenance or shipping temperature conditions

4. Variability in natural cork closures

5. Variability in consumers’ tastes and/or perceptions

Any other reason why a recently bottled wine with apparently no variability in bottling blends and no major temperature differences in shipping conditions would be viewed as having serious ‘bottle variation’?

Cheers

Cheers.

I think 80% or more of supposed bottle variation is number 5.

It’s like pornography. I can’t describe it, but I know it when I see it.

I’m with David, in that I think a good % of cases probably fall within #5.

On occasion I have opened multiple bottles of the same wine at the same time that have tasted vastly different. In those cases something clearly happened to change the taste of a wine across bottles.

However a lot of the time I “notice” ‘bottle variation’ is over time, i.e. the bottle I opened now doesn’t quite taste or smell the way I remember past bottles. There are so many things that can affect our nose and palate and how we perceive a wine or even how we recall it tasted like. Yet somehow, we predominantly tend to mostly attribute the bottle variance to the wine itself rather than our palates or recollection. I do wonder how much of ‘bottle variation’ fall under these cases.

Remember folks - in this case, I am talking about a newly bottled wine that shouldn’t be subject to many of the variabilities above . . .

Cheers

I guess a more recent experience of mine are some of the De Negoce wines I have had. Same case, shipped all at the same time, same conditions, stored the same, opened within days of each other so time or memory isn’t a problem. I’ve had bottles tasting spot on and evolving to bottles tasting very acidic and disjointed.

I wonder how often people open up multiple bottles of the same wine side by side at the same time. How much of it is actual bottle variation vs. just one’s a different perception over time?

There are only good bottles. You could have two bottles of 1945 Chateau d Y’quem and only one is “killer”. Happened to me. But both were outstanding, one was killer.

I believe natural corks are up there, if not at the top. Sadly Wes Hagen’s website is now defunct, but there’s an old thread on this: Cork TCA Infection Rates - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers

For very young wines, I think it’s well above 80%. Of course, natural wines are the big exception.

If you’re eating and drinking, I’d think the food may affect the variation?

Not to mention serving conditions. Temperature being the most obvious variable.

Sometimes they open different wines and can’t tell the difference

That is my experience too. De Negoce #2 had some bottles taste young but promising, others tasting of nothing but acid and alcohol. Never had any other wine show such variability bottle to bottle, so I don’t think it is #5 in this case.

Well Larry, I agree with some of the others that it’s very likely due to the perception of the taster. Most tasters just aren’t that perceptive. If they really know a wine, they should be able to identify it blind with no trouble, just as they identify their friends and families. But most people can’t. Consequently, unless they’re tasting the wines side by side, it’s a vague memory that may or may not be accurate. Kind of like being introduced to someone one day at some function and then several years later running into that person and not being sure if you met before or not.

As to old wine, I’m inclined to include the cork as much as anything else. I recently had a few bottles and we did indeed open them side by side just because one seemed a bit dead to me. They were both about 16 years old and from the winery originally. One just seemed mediocre until I paid close attention to the finish and couldn’t tell whether or not it was slightly corked. I think I started trying to convince myself, so we opened a second bottle. Much better and fresher. So I don’t know what to attribute that to other than the corks. Hopefully, when I try that with some Tercero, I won’t encounter the differences!

I haven’t had the opportunity to test this on just-bottled wines, but I have noticed pretty significant Brett differences between bottles of wine within a year of their bottling date. I’ve observed this from multiple wineries. To my knowledge these are wines that are unfiltered and do not use Velcorin at bottling but my information is a bit patchy on the latter.

In general I think there’s a lot more variability due to microbial activity than people think, and somewhere in my gut I suspect that this extends pretty far beyond well-known and widely recognized effects.

The impetus for writing this was one of the DeNegoce’s bottlings, their #17. The opinions on this bottle have been so varied that the question of bottle variation has been brought up.

Cheers.

All depends. I think of Thomas which I have bought every year since 2004. In the case of Thomas, it has to be something about the cellar practices up to and including bottling.
I also think of Pegau, which involves cellar practices combined with grey market shipping and storage.

If I open two young bottles from the same case and serve them at the same temperature, side by side, and find that they taste different sip after sip, I would assume that I can rule out “5) Variability in consumers’ tastes and/or perceptions”. However, I have almost never performed this experiment.

I had a related experiment performed on me before though, 15-20 years ago. Three glasses of wine served blind. Two are from one bottle and the third is from a different bottle. In my case, both bottles were from the same region and vintage. The goal was to identify the two glasses from the same bottle. It was much harder than I expected. I don’t remember if I got the answer right… which means that I probably didn’t.