Physics of aging Champagne (and other sparklers too)

[Alan_Rath]

@TGibson

One possibility here is that not all of the ‘same’ wine is bottled at the same time each vintage. Maybe a tank or part of a tank will be bottled one day and another tank bottled several months later. This, of course, isn’t to dispute what you said, only that there may be other possibilities leading to bottle variation across a vintage.

Yeah, there are some producers (mainly old world, that I know of) who do multiple bottlings, sometimes as small as barrel by barrel. I’m not aware of many/any new world producers who do that. But I’ve experienced at least a couple of instances where there was noticeable difference between bottles. One was a well known California producer. At an event I tasted from several bottles that were opened over the course of a few hours, and even the pourer remarked on the differences. A wine of decent size production, and I concluded they hadn’t done a very good job of cross blending and mixing all the barrels that went into bottling.

[Al_Osterheld]

There is one popular, no longer cheap, Zin blend in California that’s not all made in the same facility.

-Al