I’d love a little help identifying a flaw that’s making bottles taste a bit like stagnant water.
A little context- About 6 months ago I suitcased a few cases of wine from storage in the US to the UK. Painfully, the luggage got lost for 24 hours so it’s impossible to know what happened to the wine during that period. After waiting a few months, I’ve dug into some of them. Much of the wine has showed brilliantly, with highlights being a '98 Clape Cornas and a '97 Chave Hermitage. However, I’ve found a huge incidence rate (near 30 percent) of wines showing really off-putting aromas of swamp/ stagnant water. It’s a pretty pungent aroma and ends up dominating the profile. Unfinished bottles show the same problem the next day.
For completeness, the affected bottles I can remember are an '01 Jean-Marc Vincent Santenay, a '00 Noel Verset Cornas, a '98 Beaucastel and a '97 La Chapelle Hermitage.
Any ideas?
Here’s a pair of swamp bottles for your amusement
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they’re just old and dead
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Maybe atypical brett aromas, or heat damage?
Brett brought on by heat was my first guess. Can a brett bloom happen over 24 hours? It’s definitely not like any other brett aroma i’ve come across but it’s the most convincing explanation I can come up with. It’s worth mentioning that I tried a lot of these bottles in the US and none showed this characteristic. The too-old ones just tasted oxidative and tired rather than swampy
Quite probably heat from where they were stored. Virtually all of those bottles, if properly stored should still be goof.
I had a similar occurrence when returning from Cote Rôtie with about 10 bottles. I forgot that the layover in Dulles would be about 6 hours and unfortunately, it was 100F that day (June!). The bottles were still very warm to the touch when we got home. So, when I taste “swamp” or stagnant water, I think more about sulfides. Most sulfides are below our taste and smell threshold, but they are unstable (transforming from di-sulfides to tri-sulfides species) and so wines can start to show mercaptans and other skinky compounds (these have lower thresholds). These originate from high H2S early in the fermentation process if ferm. yeast are stressed (lack of YAN - yeast available nitrogen- is the most common stressor).
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Very interesting; thanks for this! If it’s a sulfide-related smell, is there any hope for recovery? (assuming not but can’t hurt to ask). I hope some of your wines survived that flight
light strike is another possibility
yes-- mercaptans can revert back to a di-sulfide. My home wines from 2017 were badly affected and now suddenly they are great. I wish I had just set them all aside!
I learned all this in enology classes/textbooks-- here’s something from @jaime_Goode on the topic and shows methyl mercaptan associated with “stagnant water” sensory impact (among others): Mercaptans and other volatile sulfur compounds in wine
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you know it just occurred to me that I should have said that the sulfides shifts can be (are mostly, I think) temperature related. What is your storage temp now?
Thanks for the reply!
That could line up with my experience, considering how different the storage is now. For 20 years the wine was in a temperature controlled wine storage facility but since its arrival to the uk it’s been an outside building. I don’t measure the temperature but it’s relatively insulated, so i’d guess in the winter it’s gotten down to 4 or 5 celsius and up to 14 or so in the summer (I know, not ideal; please don’t roast me). So I suppose since its arrival (and likely large but unknown heat exposure in transit) it’s fallen from 14 to 5ish C.
Is this sort of shift more likely with one big hit of heat or this kind of slow change it’s seen in the cellar?
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it’s hard to avoid – mine is mostly in a sweet spot, but goes from 10 to 17C during periods of extremes. So in the winter months, try bringing out a bottle that you plan to open, but let it sit for a few weeks in a spot where it can stabilize from say, 15 to 17-ish, such as a pantry or closet. Curious to know if this changes the situation. And/or after a few weeks of spring/summer month temps. are things noticeably better? If it’s Brett. related warmer temps. exacerbate the problem
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Much appreciated! I’ll give this a try and report back
