I bet you could find a bunch of helpful WB in FL who would be willing to travel a bit to help someone get to the bottom of this.
the only question I haven’t seen asked yet is:
do you ever bring champagnes home and directly drink them without them going into your cellar first? that would be a really good test to run to rule out (or in) your cellar as the only culprit. if its still bitter, its something else (like glassware cleaning?). if its not, then its probably time to have someone run some tests in your cellar air quality or something?
In Florida. Thanks for all the support or ideas! Defiantly seeking any FL based WB’ers who can help me solve this problem with a tasting. Plenty of Selosse, Ulysse Collin, C Boucjard, Egly, Agrapart etc to share.
Your assumption is that there hasn’t been any issue with the storage temp. But is there any chance that your backup generator and/or alarm weren’t working at some point and the power was out? I would think that some type of one-time event like that in the Florida heat would be the most likely explanation. Not sure if you’re aware of any specific incident where the power was out for an entire day, and if so whether you manually checked out the cellar throughout that period to ensure it remained cool (rather than relying on the alarm)?
I’ve always been of the opinion that most here are way too finicky about temperatures, so I find this difficult to believe. With a subterranean cellar with temperature control, I find it very hard to believe that even a loss of power for several days in summer would have an appreciable effect. Obviously there are those who worry much more about these things, so that’s just my take. At most I’d think you’d have a slight acceleration in an aging curve, not something that could be described as a flaw.
With this thread more generally I simply can’t believe that the wines are actually flawed. I think this has to be a perception issue, perhaps some combination of physical condition affecting the sense of taste and a psychological impact suggesting that bottles consumed elsewhere are more sound.
I would try bringing another bottle or two (not necessarily Cristal!) to a restaurant on several occasions, and maybe don’t chill it so much first, to try to isolate the problem.
Have you verified your fridge temperature? 40F is standard, 38F is on the low side. Perhaps it’s actually lower than that.
Thanks John. I am certain it has never happened. First off it’s 12 feet underground and will hold temperature for 6-8 hours if shutting off the system. The backup generator has only been used once and it was for 20 minutes. That is the only time period where the temperature recorder had a 30 second glitch (as it switched power sources). And the still wines in the cellar all drink perfectly from my perspective (at least 9 bottles out of 10).
Thanks for all the help!
How’s the right way to cellar Champagnes? I read both ways, that should be cellared horizontally (as any other wine), but also that shouldn’t be horizontally since the CO2 will keep the cork moist and doing in that way increases the risk of being corked.
The wine is corked because it is in contact with a damaged cork for a period of time, right? What if it is just in contact for brief period of time? Will be corked anyways?
I don’t know. I read that, champagnes shouldn’t be cellared horizontally. But again. I don’t know. I don’t have enough experience with old champagnes.
many reasons for a corked wine. Sometimes the entire facility is “infected,” other times a barrel, other times a bad cork. But if it’s the cork, it touches the wine enough during the wine process from winery to distributor to retailer to you that the wine becomes corked.
My guess is that champagnes stored elsewhere won’t have this problem, if you do that experiment. If that’s the case, I would certainly have your house and cellar tested for various air quality issues, including carbon monoxide, radon, etc. Also, do you cook or heat/cool with natural gas? I’m actually not aware of any of these things having been described as causing your problem or affecting the quality of stored wine, but it might be an interesting investigation.
I definitely think he should confirm that it is an actual problem before he gets into costly and cumbersome fixes.
Get a small group of experienced wine people and try some of your Champagnes blind against similar bottles that either other people contributed or that you freshly acquired from retail. If you don’t have some wine friends in the area, maybe the somms or owners from one or two of your favorite local restaurants would sit down with you, and/or you could find a few WBers in your area to join in.
I think the very high likelihood is that a couple of blind tastings like that will make you realize there isn’t a Champagne problem in your cellar, and you’ll be able to close this chapter and move ahead.
It’s an unusual specific story, but on more reflection, it’s quite common even among experienced and passionate wine people to have preconceptions affect what we taste in the glass, often significantly. If I had to take a guess, you may have opened a couple of bottles that were off and/or on a night when your palate was off, the idea that “Champagne from my storage taste off” got into your head, and now you perceive it even if it objectively doesn’t exist.
I hope that doesn’t sound like a criticism. We all, at times, let preconceptions affect how we perceive what we are drinking.
“This is from [acclaimed producer], it must be good – or if it isn’t, then it’s probably an off bottle or in a dumb phase or needs the right food pairing.”
“This is from [disparaged vintage like 2003], I am finding flaws in it.”
“This is a wine brought by a friend who always has great stuff, I know I’m going to like it.”
“This just arrived in shipping, it may be travel shocked.”
Blind comparative tasting is the way to realize if there is an actual problem, and if there isn’t one, it’s probably is the way to break the spell that idea has on your mind. Make sure to hold all the other variables constant other than storage at your cabinet – stemware, temperature, if it’s an NV the same base years, etc. And make sure it’s truly blind to you. Have your wife or neighbor blind them properly so you don’t have any idea which ones are which.
Please report back after you give it a couple of tries. I wish you the best.
If it is not happening to the still wines then it is definitely not the storage. There is a long lingering perception that Champagne is somehow fragile in comparison to still wines. I have never found it to be the case that similarly aged sparkling wines are massively more susceptible to storage and temperature variations than still wines. Besides, that storage situation sounds better than what 90% of us have anyway.
I’m afraid to say I only know of one thing that causes what you are describing: palate fatigue.
I’m with Chris and some others here - this seems like it must be in part psychological. A few bad experiences and now it’s inevitable because you’re expecting it.
I really do think that blind tasting against external bottles is the best way out of this. Or, if your bottles are experiencing some extremely rare unknown problem, then blind tasting is the only way to determine that.
