I would believe a marine biologist who told me that a shark could smell blood from a mile away because I would assume he would have an experimental basis (not the same thing as your experience, Francoise) for making the claim. If another marine biologist contested the claim, I would try to the best of my abilities to judge the quality of the evidence they adduced. Here, people are contesting your claim and the rest of us are making our best judgments. But no one listens to a person who says you should just listen to me.
There is a very good book about the scientific elements of tasting wine. It referenced a number of blind studies with industry professionals on this exact issue. Same result. Blind, most of the industry professionals participating in the studies preferred the livelier pop and pour wine over the decanted wine. I read that right when I was beginning to take a material interest in wine. Cover was black and yellow and white. I cannot for the life of me remember the title and gave the book to a friend. I’ll reach out and try to get the title. It was awesome, albeit a bit pedantic and boring.
Altitude has a profound effect on Champagne/Sparkling Wine.
In what way?
Even in older Champagnes, the effervescence becomes significantly more lively at higher altitudes.
Makes perfect sense. But do they taste different?
It is more than that. There is also confirmation bias against scientific analysis. I believe it, I have convinced myself it is so, and so when I perform this ritual, I get the results I expect and so must be correct. And yet, is there a control to your experiment? Are you blinding groups of others on pop and then 4 hours later? What “bad molecules” are you referring to? As aromas of decomposition evaporate (presumably that’s the smell in a 120 year old bottle), are not also phenolic compounds of the wine’s remaining fruit profile?
I cannot speak to the science behind it, Francois, but am simply trying to explain why many others may remain skeptical. One may say, a shark can smell a drop of blood in the water from a mile away, and then provide a scientific explanation of the olfactory organs of a shark, hypersensitivity to same, and then evidence from repeated studies “proving” the hypothesis.
I would love to see tests of the molecular composition of gas in the head-space of a 120 year old wine, relative to the same once the bottle has be “Audozed” for 4 hours. You may very well have a point. You may not have a point, though, for a 15 year old bottle of wine.
These personal anecdotal experiences, no matter how frequent, are not reliable. We think they are because of confirmation bias, but they aren’t. I mean, we have massive battles on this forum about “travel shock” and whether a wine improves after being open (and with increasing head space) on the counter for 4-6 days. We’re all fairly ready to let ourselves know we’ve got it all figured out, but most of us can’t even blind taste our way out of a paper sack on wines we’ve had. Most can’t blind on theory alone. Most have missed corked bottles before, and certainly more times than they know. Some love brett and don’t think it’s a flaw. Some think premoxed wines can come back to life with more oxygen. Some think no-sulfur wines are a good idea. Some think heat damage and resolve with time. Some here even like still rose!
Blind tasting comments aside, my question is why? Why do some of us think those things? Because we believe in our own senses. Often to a flaw. Add belief in your own senses with your preconceived notions about wine and you’ve patted yourself on the back for your rightness.
But that’s why blind tasting experiments exist (which repeatedly prove that cheap wine is not the same as expensive wine)!
I have put a report of a dinner made last Friday.
A 1945 La Fleur-Pétrus had a level between mid and low shoulder. Smell by opening was disagreeable, acidic and like a washing towel.
4 hours later the smell had largely improved and the wine that many amateurs would had not served was absolutely delicious, confirmed by the two sommeliers of Taillevent.
The problem is not my intrinseque ability to judge a wine but to see the difference of perfume between two moments for the same bottle of wine. If there were not any dramatic difference, I would never mention it.
It continues to amaze me that some people are perfectly fine with wide assessments based on a single bottle and other people want to see detailed scientific experimentation.
The more that I make and try to understand wine, the winemaking process, and how wines breathe an age, the less I seen to truly be able to wrap my head around things.
Yes, at times, things seem to be somewhat predictable. But more often than not, I am surprised that a wine shows better while after it was supposed to, or does not show well at all when it is supposed to, or shows poorly but then comes around hours and hours later.
One of that sagest pieces of advice I’ve heard on this board is one should not make any assumptions on any other bottle of wine based in the performance of a particular bottle.
Cheers
When I mentioned barometric pressure, i was thinking back to when I was in retail.
It would seem one day the place was dead and the next day, when the weather changed, people came out of the hills to buy wine. Maybe the wine tastes the same but we taste differently.Or hope to drink more.
Of course, the weather impacts the way you feel about drinking wine but I don t know if anybody has studied this scientifically.
Francois, with sharks we have all kinds of scientists who have studied this issue. With the Audouze system…it’s one guy and what the science people call anecdotal evidence. From what i have done experimentally I would guess that it would be better to open the wine closer to drinking time and then see where to go from there. Conventional wisdom–people like Harry Waugh and Michael Broadbent–gave us the notion that it is better to open up older wines closer to drinking time.
Of course, oxygen impacts wine at every stage of development…but is it for good or evil??
I haven’t experienced a change in taste, but some people claim the flavors become more muted as the altitude gets higher.
K John Joseph has a distant cousin named Robert Joseph (and maybe even a winemaker cousin named Kathy) who helped start Wine magazine and the International Wine Challenge in London. He maintains that most consumers prefer younger wine over the older. He did a blind tasting with a famous property in Margaux and everyone liked the youngest wines.
Speaking personally I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed any wine in hot and muggy weather.
I don’t know. I seem to recall a few decent bottles at Brad’s under such oppressive conditions.
mel,
Michael Broadbent has drunk many more old wines than me. I have an immense respect for his experience.
But I have probably opened 20 to 100 times more wines than what he has, because I open all the wines that I drink even when I am in wineries (old wines I mean) and the people who believe that a wine could faint when opened too early are completely wrong. And it is because I have seen that the slow oxygenation reinforces wines instead of making them faint that I insist in trying to let this fact more recognized.
With due respect to you I am not just a guy knowing nothing, it is an experience of 45 years of opening thousands of old wines which allows me to talk.
I have the same scientific doubt as anyone, but when facts repeat and repeat every time, there is a moment when I can pretend that it works totally.
Let me ask you : how many bottles before 1950 have you opened by yourself ?
I did the experiment with two wine groups. To eliminate bottle variation, I opened 6 magnums of different Bordeaux from the nineties, all left Bank and served them double blind. The top half was poured into a decanter and allowed to breathe for three hours. The bottom half was poured into fifth to the top excluding as much oxygen as possible and recorked.
Results were pretty mixed. At first, nobody figured out what was going on, when I told them, only one person was able to match all the wines. The less experienced group seemed to prefer the decanted wines, while the experienced one preferred the ones straight from bottle. Nothing conclusive, and for me all it proved is that we may talk a good game, but none of us really really know what we are talking about.
The problem with this is that the act of pouring off 1/2 of a bottle still exposes the remainder to a fair amount of air, then pouring it into another bottle does the same, so it’s really hard to say that that portion is equivalent to a pop and pour after 3 hours. It’s very hard to design a comparison group that is truly equivalent to pop and pour unless you are using a separate bottle, which has its own problems, of course.
I’ve mentioned a double blind tasting at Ridge several years ago, which was 3 flights of three wines. “Something different and something in common” with all the wines. The wines in the first two flights were distinct from each other. (Easy conclusion to me they were all Estate Cab, since I know what they make and they surely didn’t show like Monte Bello.) In the third flight the 1st and 3rd wine were confusingly similar, and the middle wine was so different than the rest, showing like PV, it threw my theme theory into question. With time, as the wines evolved in the glass, I began noticing that the 3rd wine kept showing how the 1st wine had shown a few minutes earlier. Hmm. Christopher had gone around the table pouring one wine, then the next, then the next, so it was a couple minutes between each. Turned out to be from three 750mls of the same vintage. So, the two glasses following the same exact trajectory made sense. (The anomaly is another issue.)
Francois,
I have uncorked maybe 60 or 70 wines pre 1950, so you have me there.
Of course, my question to you is this: have you ever opened two bottles of the same wine, let’s say a '53 or a '47, one three hours before tasting and the other right before tasting and then submitted these wines blind to a panel ?? If so,how many times??
What virtually every experiment done with wine younger than the '61 vintage does not show a statistically significant percentage of wines improving with aeration. Sometimes the panel is mixed; sometimes the just opened bottles win hands down.
You have a strong point in there. People are claiming you have confirmation bias, but so many people you pour for have the opposite expectations of you. Their experiences belie that claim.
While the shark analogy was poor, there certainly was a time there was no explanation for that phenomenon. No sharks observed in the area. Blood poured in water. More and more sharks appear.
It certainly is not scientific to dismiss something out of hand, simply because there’s no explanation. Having certainty in an alternative explanation, without basis, isn’t scientific. It’s an alternative assumption. A preponderance of anecdotal evidence is a starting point.
I’ll also point out to people you don’t just universally find every one of these ancient wines great. You’ve also made note of how wines perform relative to your expectation. This also runs counter to the confirmation bias claim.
So, it seems to me there’s a greater chance there’s something to your method than not, even if we don’t know why.