I received a four bottle shipment of wine 5 days ago, December 29th. Opened the box yesterday and discovered that one of the corks had pushed halfway out without any evidence of leakage. The other bottles appeared unaffected. I called the winery and spoke to a very nice lady who immediately agreed to replace the bottle. She speculated that the seal was likely compromised and recommended consuming the wine soon. Acting immediately upon her advice, we pulled the cork and enjoyed beautiful Pinot Noir. The wine was terrific; however, when the last glass was poured, there was an obvious cloudiness in the wine. This brings me to my questions. What was the likely precipitate? Tartrate perhaps? Although the other bottles show no outward signs of damage, I wonder if they will have similar precipitation when opened some time in the future.
Not sure what your precipitate was but if you’ve ever frozen a full bottle and then thawed it, there’s a definite layering of the wine - the solids kind of stay low and the watery part stays on top. And if you mix it back together, it’s surprisingly less damaged than you might have thought. Good that yours was OK and kudos to them for the replacement.
From what I’ve understood, wine really doesn’t suffer from being frozen, as opposed to heat damage, which damages the wine noticeably and very fast. The problem is - as exactly pointed out above - the quality of the seal.
Most often, when wine freezes, it expands pushing the cork out. When the wine thaws, there’s going to be some extra room in the bottle that needs to be filled. Most often the vacuum that is created in the leftover space is enough to pull in some air through the cork, resulting in excessive dissolved oxygen in the wine, making it develop faster. Freezing can also have a negative effect on the elasticity of the cork, further compromising the seal. Thus, the wine is normally a-ok for a short while after having been frozen, but usually not for long. Pushing the cork back in, letting the wine age in a cellar and hoping for the best can be quite a gamble against the odds.
Usually, if the wine isn’t cold-filtered, tartrate crystals precipitate out if the wine gets cold enough (in some wines fridge temperature is enough to do the trick). However, they are normally just wine crystals at the bottom of the bottle and I really don’t know what could make the wine cloudy. Perhaps it was just unfiltered and contained some sediment, i.e. it would’ve been cloudy even if not frozen? Or then it might’ve been haze from proteins that got denaturated by the freezing process? I really don’t know.
As Otto said, it was probably tartrates. Let it go. 
On December 9th I placed an order for a case of wine with Garnet in NYC for shipping to VA. I got an order acknowledgment that stipulated it would be confirmed.
On December 16th I emailed them asking for status, as I had not yet received a confirmation. I never got a reply, and figured the order was lost, so I gave up on it.
Yesterday afternoon I got the FedEx email showing that the wine had been picked up. Delivery is expected tomorrow. What the hell is wrong with wine shop keepers who would do this?
I have an order coming today from the NE, left Tuesday. My fountain in Orlando even froze this morning. Nervous as well.
Garnet was sold two years ago and the current owners don’t drink wine and there doesn’t seem to be anyone there now who knows anything about wine. It’s a very strange store now – with some very good deals, if you can find the wine on the shelf. I started a thread on the changes two years ago.
Garnet has a great deal on 2015 Juge right now.
![[wow.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/7/7d450e9830889c8943b674446a21b7254cad657e.gif "wow"){kind=small}
What are they thinking???
20% Off!!!
We should call the state Attorney General on them for price gouging during this winter blizzard, depriving wine aficionados of much needed, warming elixir. I mean really, I was stuck drinking 2013 Levet out of magnums over the holidays, oh the humanity . . . .
Slightly cheaper than the 2003 Cote Roti La Landonne Mmiii e Guigal.
It is such a weird store now. Used to be my #1 place to buy wine back in pre-CSW days.
Polar Express delivered the wines today in one of those shippers made using formed pulp (great for recycling, not so great for buffering the elements). Aside from being too cold to Pobega, they are in fine shape. Even if the severe cold caused some tartrate crystals to form, these bottles will be drunk up in the next year or two, so this story ends well.
Cheers!
- What’s with the description?
- I’m terrified of how that has been stored.
Good info to know.
So a cork will be pushed out almost certainly if the wine froze??
I’d say the answer to that is yes. I received some wine last week with the corks pushed up. Wine had leaked into the packaging. That has happened to me about a half dozen times over the years. Sometimes the corks were just pushed up a bit. I push them back down if there is no leakage, and have never noticed any bad effects. When there is leakage I ask for replacement.
I’ve also forgotten wine in the freezer that I placed there for a quick chill. As soon as it starts to freeze, the cork is pushed up.
Water expands when it freezes, but I had no idea how much!
Water is one of the few exceptions to this behavior. When liquid water is cooled, it contracts like one would expect until a temperature of approximately 4 degrees Celsius is reached. After that, it expands slightly until it reaches the freezing point, and then > when it freezes it expands by approximately 9%.
(Citation) That’s 67.5 milliliters expansion if a 750ml bottle entirely freezes. That’ll certainly push the cork out! For comparison, in my blind tasting group, we typically measure pours at 50-60ml.
Wine freezes in a continuous set of stages. As the temperature drops low enough that it starts to freeze, both water and alcohol freeze out but in percentages that raise the alcohol percentage of the remaining liquid which lowers the freezing point (and the freezing gives up some heat energy to the liquid). So, the freezing stops unless the temperature of the remaining liquid continues to drop. It produces a slushy mix of some frozen material and some liquid until the temperature gets quite low.
So, it’s possible for a wine to freeze just a little bit without pushing the cork enough to break the seal. But, the only real thing to worry about is breaking the seal. The temperature cycling may cause some acid to drop out of the wine, but I think this has a minor impact on the wine and doubt most people would notice it.
-Al
Thanks for the technical nuances, Al.