I purchased some Groffier and Dugat-Py '99’s on release. The container froze on the way to the Antipodes and I was offered a substantial discount on the wine when it arrived. Every bottle has been splendid.
1999 Domaine Robert Groffier Chambertin-Clos de Bèze- France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Chambertin-Clos de Bèze Grand Cru (12/31/2018)
The nose is expressive with notes of meat, pine needle sap, tar and black cherry. There’s a real sauvage character to the flavour profile and it has a deep core of liqueur cherry fruit that intensifies with air. It is strong with great volume and freshness. Sinewy tannins carry the long finish. Still supremely youthful.
Some did freeze and some just got bloody cold,
They were all great value, last one I opened was an Arnoux Suchots a couple of years ago and it was very very young and grumpy. I have never had a bad bottle out of that shipment and I drunk heaps of them
If not, full bottles of wine probably didn’t fully freeze. Don’t get me wrong - I advocate sticking partially consumed/used bottles in the freezer all the time, and I don’t think there will be any notable difference with those wines or unopened bottles that got really cold without solidifying in transit. I would have questions about wine that got cold, turned solid and pushed corks (especially knowing how much you guys love your screwcaps!)
If the answer is no, I’m not too surprised the wines are fine.
I’ve used it as a way to keep wine for cooking in particular, but my experience based on tasting is that it doesn’t affect the wines flavors or aromas all that much. I’ve done it when i’ve put on tasting events and been left with a quantity of very good wine that seemed a shame to dump out. You’ll get acid crystals at the bottom of the bottle to watch for.
It would have to get extremely cold to fully freeze a bottle of wine (freezing point drops as some liquid freezes), but even partial freezing usually pushes the cork a little.
This was a shipping container full of 1999 Burgundy that suffered a fault with its cooling system that caused the wine to be exposed to extremely low temps on the trip from France to Australia, some of the bottles had pushed corks. Insurance paid out on the entire shipment, The merchant then offered the wines for cents on the dollar and they sold briskly, I seem to remember buying Bourgogne from Arnoux, Grivot and a few others for around $4 a bottle,
I froze a few bottles years ago. The corks protruded and the freezing apparently caused a crystalline precipitate to form. I drank them soon after with no apparent ill effects but would have hesitated to hold them long term.
A little may have frozen on those bottles, but not very much. A typical Bourgogne will start to freeze around 22F, but not much will freeze. At 0F, I think roughly a third of the liquid will freeze although it takes a while. That would undoubtedly push corks on bottles with normal ullage.
Wine isn’t like water, the ethanol and water form what’s called a non-ideal mixture and the composition of the liquid continuously changes as part of it freezes. The alcohol percentage in the unfrozen liquid rises as it partially freezes, further lowering the freezing temperature. I think it freezes solid at something like -180F although it will be nearly solid at somewhat warmer temperature.
Have never noticed damage from partially frozen wine except in the case of a magnum of '82 Deutz Vinotheque we accidentally froze partway. The bubbles did not seem to like it.
We had a 17 case Traulsen refrigerator rebuilt to maintain 55 degrees. The earthquake must have adjusted the temperature to 30 degrees and I didn’t check it for a week while we cleaned up and made repairs at the store. The refrigerator had our collection of Silver Oak, 1976 to 1997, Beringer PR, same vintages, magnums of both odds and end CA wines and two cases of Australian Shiraz. The only bottles that still had corks were the Aussies. It would have been a total loss but the Aussies tasted even better than I remember. 17.5% ABV probably needs 25 degrees or less to freeze.
