Went to my offsite storage to drop off and re-arrange some wines and found this bottle burst out of the bottom. We were all stumped as to what happened. I store my wines in an bunker so it couldn’t have been temperature fluctuations, I also keep a monitor in my unit to monitor them remotely. Was stored in a wooden box that was on top so it couldn’t have been pressure either. Any ideas? I store at presidio wine bunkers in San Francisco.
Probably a defect in the glass.
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Yes, likely defect or maybe was stored two deep at some point and the glass in that spot was weakened when it was bumped hard (defect of another sort).
-Al
My guess as well. Never saw one blown out like this. Usually it’s on a seam or right at the base on the hard curve. The bend in the angle here could have created the weak spot.
I think Al called it right: Seems like it must have been some combination of a glass defect and some physical force. Wood boxes don’t provide much/any insulation from hard knocks.
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Someone put a Coravin in the wrong end.
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It happens. Either a defect, or someone put the bottle down a little too hard at some point, and stressed the glass.
Years ago I came back from Germany with a couple of cases of wine I’d picked up at different winery visits. l pulled one bottle out (Donnhoff 
), which were flat on the bottom, no punt, and the bottom circle of glass was just sitting at the bottom of the styro. The really weird thing is that there was no sign of any liquid, nothing was wet or stained, like it had been soaked than dried up. Just strange.
I once put a bottle of wine back into a cardboard case, accidentally trying to insert it into an occupied spot. The deep punt barely contacted the top of the bottle in the slot, but it blew out spilling all the wine before I could save even a drop.
A bottle of old red Burgundy broke in a suitcase of mine many years ago, flying from Paris to New York. I don’t recall anything wet in the suitcase, and the red wine washed out of my clothes.
If you flew from Germany to California, I imagine the wine would have evaporated in the cold given the nearly non-existent humidity at 30,000 feet (assuming you checked the wine).
John, that was my hypothesis as well. But still strange.
In the 90s, before the 9/11 restrictions were introduced, I used to carry large numbers of bottles onto the plane as carry on. Wish we could still do that.
A gentleman would apologize
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Rats!
Overfill with defective glass. I have seen bottles blow on a fill line if the fill creates too much pressure in the bottle. The bottle will fail at its weakest point. This one just happened at bit later.
What is your theory on this one: I have a friend who ground shipped a bottle of whiskey from the Puget Sound region to his brother in N. CA during the peak of summer. The bottle arrived fully intact and fully empty. Not a drop in the bottle, not a stain on the box, no sign of tampering. He insists that the whiskey must have evaporated during the two day trip. Seems as likely as space aliens drinking it, but it doesn’t explain the mystery.
(I don’t think this is a FedEx issue!).
Bottling error? It didn’t evaporate in a sealed bottle in two days.
-Al
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Right. That seems absurd. But you would think they would have noticed when they boxed it up?
Well, Beaucastel is the poster boy for brett, so I guess it’s possible that there was a tiny bit of brett in the bottle that continued to ferment in the bottle, increasing that pressure even further.
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They should have noticed. But the guys in shipping might not be the best of their employees.
-Al
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Agree with Al. Alcohol actually has a higher coefficient of expansion with temperature than water, so if it had been exposed to high heat, it probably would have pushed the stopper. Sounds like a bottle that was never filled. How someone could pull that and pack it, and not realize it was empty is pretty strange as well lol.
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