So I ordered some wine from the East coast and kept my fingers crossed as it wended its way through chillier and chillier climes until it reached Nevada. It spent 3 nights in Elko, NV., where night time temps dipped into the mid-teens. The wine was packed in pulp, not styrofoam.
When it arrived, the wax capsules looked slightly raised to me, though just barely. The wine is 2013 Fourrier GC VV and, when comparing these bottles to my 2012, the wax on the latter was slightly indented rather than raised. So I peeled off the wax on one of the 2013s. Indeed the cork protruded above the neck, but only slightly.
So I’ve had heat damaged wine before but not cold-damaged. Whenever I read about “pushed corks,” I pictured something more dramatic…inches rather than centimeters. So, I am wondering, is this cork pushed or is this just natural variation in cork insertion? Should I drink these soon rather than hold them for some considerable time, as I had planned?
No, not really air bubbles. It was still one solid piece but with a slight curve to it rather than flat or indented. Maybe like one big bubble, if that makes sense. It also had a slight nicking all the way around the rim as if someone had run something sharp all the way along the inside edge of the neck. But the wax was not broken. I tried to take a picture of one of the other bottles but the quality isn’t great.
I wouldn’t be too worried unless you expect you might sell them at some point.
I have a couple of these and I checked the wax. One of them is slightly crowned. I suspect the cracking of the wax may be due to the wax being cold and not the wine freezing and pushing the cork.
I have not had a lot of experience with cold damaged wines but the experience I have had has been good. I personally would push the cork back down and not push the aging window. Also expect more sediment as tartaric acid among other things will fall out of solution more as the wine gets cold.
Not sure who you bought them from but I would ask them to make it right especially if you wanted to lay these down from some time.
I had wine freeze in transit once. It was super obvious with corks pushed up 1/4 to 1/2 easily. Wine leaked as well. The foil capsules were all busted. These pictures do not look like that at all.
It took below zero outdoor temps to actually freeze the wine. FWIW I drank them early and they tasted good.
These bottles are for consumption. Yes, that cracking looks like all my bottles, but the wax protrudes more than yours. I’m guessing as you say that it’s not a big deal but it does confirm my sense that I shouldn’t purchase from the East coast any more. It always seems touch and go with the temps.
Joe-- the retailer is a large established one that I’m sure would replace the bottles if I asked. However it really was the fault of UPS who left the wines overnight for 3 nights rather than continuing to move it along to CA. If it had sat in CA over the thanksgiving break, rather than in NV there wouldn’t have been a problem.
Ok, that’s good to know. There certainly wasn’t any leakage, nor close to it. And now I have an excuse to open a bottle because of course I have to check it out.
But it hasn’t been that cold anywhere so I doubt they would be affected. Of course, they could have been heat damaged somewhere else along the way. Very hard to tell from the photos if any damage.
Our Napa residence has a top/bottom refrigerator. During the earthquake the top/refrigerator opened up and 3 bottles fell into the bottom/freezer and both doors closed. This is what frozen wine looks like.
Paul, it was that cold --low middle teens. In fact, Elko NV tonight will have a low of 2 degrees. So I guess I should be glad they’re not still sitting there and got out before it dipped that low.
Thanks Karen! That’s a sad picture. But it has suggests an interesting experiment – I think I’ll put an un-opened wax-capsuled bottle in the freezer and monitor it every hour and see when the cork begins to push and what it looks like at the very early stages – rather than full blown as in your pics …by all accounts I’ll still be able to drink it.
Thanks for the help all – very much appreciate your willingness to upload pics and take the time to give input.
When wine first gets below its freezing temperature, it freezes a little bit and then stops because the freezing point of the remaining liquid is lowered (more water than alcohol freezes, so the remaining liquid is higher percentage of alcohol). If the temperature drops a bit more, a little more freezes, then it stops, etc. So, corks can be pushed a little or a lot depending on how cold they got, they won’t always look like Karen’s unless they got cold enough. Temperatures in the teens are enough to partially freeze wine. Of course, the wine usually won’t get as cold as outside temperatures.
So, the slight bit of pushing might have been caused by partial freezing. But, if it was, I wouldn’t worry very much about the impact on the wine. There might have been a little bit of oxygen that got past the cork when the wine melted (since cork didn’t retract), but not very much. As far as the wine itself, freezing a little and melting doesn’t do much except possibly cause some acid to precipitate as was mentioned (as would getting down near the freezing point but not actually freezing any of it).
Really useful info, Al. Thanks so much. So I guess I can conclude that the wine was probably very slightly frozen but that it probably won’t impact the wine’s flavors in the near term. I’ll cue these for drinking in the next couple of years (and source subsequent vintages from West coast vendors despite the added expense).
That’s a reasonable approach. If they were my bottles, I’d conclude they might have very slightly frozen but I probably would not worry about drinking them in the near term, since I think many wines have had provenance challenges at least as significant.
I’m still not convinced these bottles were impacted by weather. Originally I had the idea that the wax had cracked around the top edge of the cork but that doesn’t seem to be the case. If the corks pushed up due to freezing, the wax should have been fairly brittle and I’d expect to see cracks. I wonder if this is just variation on the bottling line? Given your 12’s are slightly depressed and my 13’s slightly raised, it seems clear there is some variation.
I assume that the wine was in shippers and in a truck. Even though the truck is not heated, I don’t think that temperature in teens is low enough to freeze the wine. Of course, I’m no expert. I’m just going on experience since I’ve had wine shipped at those temperatures and there was no damage.
I’ve helped out with bottling at a bunch of places, on a number of bottling setups from manual corking to the big trailers and most everything in between, and there is always minor variation on the cork levels during a bottling run (just as there is always minor variation in the fill levels during a run). The amount that the cork in the first photo is raised above the neck is not that unusual for a typical bottling run. But that’s generally just the case for a bottle here or there, not for an entire run - if all the corks were protruding slightly as in the photo, that would be corrected on the corker quickly. So if all of the corks in the shipment were protruding slightly, it’s probable that it’s due to something else.
One possibility that has not been mentioned - and I’ve seen this happen a couple of times - is that the wax was too hot when it was applied to the bottles. This can push the cork up very easily.
That’s an intriquing theory. It would explain why the pushed cork didn’t crack the wax. It would also explain the weird indentation all the way around the cork edge – as if the cork lifted while the wax was still malleable creating a circular groove in it… You can see that indentation on Craig’s pic much better than on mine.
