To my surprise, a NE retailer shipped to Texas this week via ground. As I’m sure most of you in the east know, it was rather cold. Upon inspection today (about 6hrs after delivery) 3 of the 6 bottles have slightly pushed corks. Spinning capsules, no signs of seepage or anything obvious. The bottles weren’t slushy or frozen on inspection but were cold. I was curious if people thought there was any damage, etc. The pushed corks is the more telling thing, but I’ve heard cold isn’t nearly as harmful to wines.
What type of wine was it? I had concerns over whites being shipped with the cold weather, and the winery assured me that the wine had already seen colder temps than was forecast.
Yes, the wine is damaged. The flavors will be muted.
I know some people here say that freezing wine is fine, but that has not been my experience. I have tasted many bottles of wine that had accidentally been frozen and they never recovered.
Yep. When I lived in Minnesota, a wine store shipped me a case in January! I came home from work to find it on the front porch. Several of the bottles were frozen enough to have completely pushed the cork out of the bottle, and even those bottles were not completely frozen.
I can’t really say if partial freezing would damage the wine, though. I’d contact the store and let them know, then taste a bottle in a few days.
Interesting. I had this happen during an Atlanta cold snap a few years back. Garagiste sent me a case of Massena 11th Hour Shiraz, and about six of the bottles still had slush in them. Two of the corks had pushed all the way through the foil. I called Garagiste and to their credit, they said they’d let me return them but they couldn’t replace them (the wine was sold out).
I decided to try them, and I could detect nothing wrong. We drank them all in the next two months (consuming the ones with pushed corks first). In retrospect, they could have had “muted flavors” as Poppy suggests above considering how extracted this wine was supposed to be.
Based on your photos, they may have slightly frozen, but only slightly. They also could have been heated at some point in the past. Since the bottles seem well sealed, I wouldn’t worry about damage from the potential freezing.
To give you an idea about the relative expansion from heating vs freezing, water at room temperature expands by something less than 1% if you heat it by 20 C (ie, by 36 F). This small expansion can push corks because the volume of water is so much larger than the volume of the typical head space, ie 1% of 750ml is larger than the air bubble in a well-filled bottle. When you freeze water, it expands by something like 9-10%. But water-alcohol mixtures don’t freeze like pure water, as Jay mentioned they just become slushier and slushier. The alcohol lowers the freezing point, to something like 23 F for 12.5% abv wines. But when they start freezing, it’s mostly water that crystallizes so the alcohol concentration goes up in the remaining liquid, further lower the freezing point. As it gets colder, a bit more freezes, so it gets slushier. From your photo, I’d estimate that at most a few percent of the wine froze.
I had an Araujo shipped to me that was frozen (cork broke the foil!). As an experiment I tasted it back to back with one that was not frozen from my cellar (shortly thereafter). No noticeable difference at all. Both delicious.
Living in Minnesota, I’ve had my fair share of frozen wines come in, most notably when one retailer finally got around to sending my “summer holds” the 3rd week of December.
My biggest concern would not be about the wine being damaged as it relates to near term consumption, but rather the integrity of the cork seal for the long term. I’ve had corks completely blow off, but for those that are just mildly elevated, I try to get them pushed back down while both bottle and cork are still cold. I’m still drinking through some white Burgs delivered 3 years ago that don’t seem to be any worse the wear.
I’ve seen precipitates in both red and white bottles that have been frozen. Not sure to what degree they detract from “perfect”, but once they settle, the wine generally seems fine, and is not noticeably flawed to my palate.
If it were me, and I was concerned about the bottles for the long term, I would probably try to return those with raised cork for replacement bottles. If for the near term, I’d live with them. I get much more worried about shipping too hot than shipping too cold…
Can anyone whose chemistry/physics is less rusty than mine offer a hypothesis as to a mechanism for cold damage?
Seems like the biggest effect of cold would be to cause precipitation of solutes (tartaric acid being the most common example). But most precipitation reactions are readily reversible, are they not?
Heat damage arguably occurs when the additional kinetic energy (a) speeds up biological reactions (e.g., brett growth), (b) speeds up oxidation reactions, and/or (c) damages complex molecules (e.g., esters–not sure if this would be considered “oxidation” per se). By contrast, cold retards most reactions. And although cold can cause a phase change, this is a physical property and not a chemical property.
Out of ignorance, it seems to me that precipitation would be the most likely cause for perceptible changes in wines that have experience freezing temperatures–I don’t understand how chemical damage like that caused by heat could occur with cold.
Tony, you have it right. That’s why shipping in heat is worse than shipping in cold from a chem/bio viewpoint. The biggest risk, as Jim noted, is having the cork seal compromised. But if they move just a little bit, I think they are just as sealed as if they hadn’t moved. I think the tartrates that precipitate out were likely to have come out in a cool cellar over time.
I had some 99 Dugat Py Charmes-Chambertin frozen several years ago, absolutely nothing wrong with the wine (its aging at a glacial pace, perhaps because it resembled a glacier a some stage).
Quite correct. Heat damage is more of a concern than cold damage, and exposure to oxygen the biggest concern overall from pushed corks, and that may not show up during near-term consumption.
As to the reversibility of precipitation reactions, I do not know if it is a full reversal and what time frame in which it would occur.
I tried the freezing method on some partially-consumed bottles and found that after the wine came back to service temperature that there was still precipitate in the bottom of the bottle and that the wine tasted flat.
It could be that the tartrates would re-solubilize over time in the cellar, but I have no basis for this supposition
Victor is referencing my case of 2000 Giscours that arrived with corks pushed out (after the retailer in NY convinced me that ground shipping in the middle of winter was fine…). However, in my case, the corks were pushed almost all the way out as some of the foils were left dangling. There was also leaking. The retailer obviously took them back and I was refunded…In comparison, your photos show much more mild freeze damage.
In any event, personally, I’d return the wines.
If not, I’d drink them sooner rather than later…maybe add some protein powder and you have a nice smoothie!
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