The first bottle from the unopened case was just a hot, stewed mess. Drain pour.
The bottles weren’t pricey enough to justify making a fuss, so I just wrote it off as a failed case purchase.
Tonight, I opened another bottle from the case. It’s nice and vibrant and everything I loved in the first bottles I bought. Obviously, had I made a fuss and opened this bottle at the shop, I’d have looked like an idiot.
How could heat not impact ALL bottles in this case? Are there other flaws that present like heat damage that I’m not considering?
The bad bottle could have been displayed somewhere, heat damaged, then added to the case. Another scenario is you got one GOOD bottle in similar circumstance, one stored somewhere safe, then added to a case of cooked wine.
I’m certainly open minded about the possibility of ‘cooked’ being an incorrect assessment for wines that may appear that way, so will follow this thread with interest.
Logically, it would not be likely that only one bottle out of a case of 6 would have been cooked while the others unaffected. There certainly is the possibility that these wines were ‘repacked’, perhaps after returns, and that you got a single bottle that had experienced this.
Could this be the result of some kind of microbial activity? Of course - but if you’re familiar with ‘cooked’ wines and you are certain that was the case, I would go with the aforementioned reason.
I might also suggest that perhaps there was a bad cork that allowed for some oxidation and that perhaps led to the issues? Less likely but always a possibility too.
Was thinking that, but what the OP mentioned did not sound like oxidation - which does not generally lead to ‘cooked’ aromas and flavors but instead ‘rotten apple’ smells among others.
Well shit I was trying to make a joke in response to this but when I add the little asterisk to imply action like one would in a text it just keeps changing the font to italics or bold.
Anyway, elite humorous troll work. I laughed when I read it.
If you think about transportation and palletization before you buy the case, there are outside cases on corner of a pallet where on bottle in a case could get hot or have a higher exposure to heat than the rest of the case that is ‘insulated’ inside the pallet.
Add in that trucks can have hot spots on the corners where that pallet sits to and its certainly feasible a bottle could get cooked.
Update… 5 of 6 bottles opened. Two so far have been drain pours. One has been fantastic. Another, tonight’s, is a bit pockmarked, but not worth throwing out of bed.
