I opened a 1996 Elio Grasso Barolo Ginestra Casa Mate that was over-the-hill. My conception of sediment was good-sized chunks. When I dumped some of the Barolo down the sink, there were small particles in the wine–see below.
Is this sediment, and, if so, does standing up the bottle (which I did not do) cure it?
Check your maths. Also, Barolo is notorious for fine sediment. If it was big chunks you could filter it.
Very fine feathery sediment - it floats around in the bottle and settles very slowly.
The really fine sediment that seems to lack much by way of adhesive qualities is really a challenge, regardless of whether the wine has been stood up for a period of time prior to opening and decanting the wine off the sediment. Fortunately (my experience, at least) most of the sediment I’ve encountered over the decades has been the “pasty” kind, that has some nice adhesive qualities so that it tends to stick to the bottle. With the pasty sediment, simply taking ones time to decant slowly, limiting the rate at which the wine pours into the decanter and avoiding sloshing the wine around in the bottle during the effort, typically results in very little sediment ending up in the decanter.
The key is that it takes a long time to settle. So standing up the bottle for at least 2 weeks–preferably a month. I’ve taken to standing up a whole bunch of eligible Barolo/Barbaresco in my cellar in the late summer so I don’t really have to think ahead over the winter mmnths, and just grab one already prepared.
Different grapes produce quite different sediment. Nebbiolo produces very, very fine sediment which, as others have said, is very slow to settle.
Cabernet tends to produce heavy deposits that will stay in the bottom of the bottle after being upright for a day or so. Sometimes there are small flackes or crystals (with tartaric acid, I think), though I wouldn’t call them “good sized chunks.”
Syrah sediment often cakes on the side of a bottle stored on its side, though additional sediment will be suspended or in the bottom of the bottle.
P.S. It’s weird that a Grasso '96 would be over the hill, particularly since those vinyards are in Monforte, which tends to produce very structured, longer-lived wines. Sounds like it might have been poorly stored. But, then, Aldo Conterno at the other end of Monforte also had some oxidation problems in that period.
Pinot & nebbiolo sediment can be especially bitter. The fine sediment cannot be effectively filtered off through a coffee filter (or some other filter). The only way is to stand up the wine for 1-2 weeks (or longer) and decant it off. By “stand up” the wine, that could also mean laying the wine on its side and opening using a wine cradle. I’ve found the best way to decant a wine for sediment is to lay it at an angle (e.g., 25-45 degrees etc.) so that the sediment ends up in the punt, and then decant it off using a wine cradle.
I had 2 bottles of the 1996 Grasso Ginestra. The first tasted, at least to me, like it was oxidized. The second was diminished and dissipated – not much fruit or acidity, and the tannins were diminished.
I also once had a Aldo Conterno Colonello from the late 1990s and it was oxidized.
I buy older wines from auction, but I am still on a learning curve, and so my experiences are very hit-or-miss. I can say, I have bought a lot of bad Barolo and Barbaresco at auction.
Are there producers or styles that you like? If you are shooting in the dark at auction, perhaps you might want to step back a bit and determine which producers make wines that you like, then find others who make similar wines. I suggest starting with base barolo/barbaresco/Langhe/Piemonte/Alto-Piemonte rosso and work forward from there.
Crapshooting Nebbiolo without any points of reference seems… inefficient. And definitely more prone to undesirable results.
There have been and continue to be oxidation problems scattered through Piedmont wines. Cappellano 2004-2006, currently ongoing discussion about this with Bartolo 2010’s on the Vinous board. Folks often bring up poor provenance, but many of the reports are from folks who buy by the case, and report only some of the bottles in the case being oxidized. I think much of the problem relates to poor corks being used by some producers. One of the posters on Vinous posted a picture of corks from a number of producers. The corks from Cappellano, Bartolo, and Rinaldi are these tiny, puny looking things, whereas corks from Giacomo Conterno, Massolino, Roagna, Burlotto are long, fat, substantial things.
