What causes wines to “shut down”?

[Wes_Barton]

The only consistent correlation that we observed was that most wine tended to show less well when the humidity in the shop was high. While the effect was most pronounced with red wine, whites suffered as well with Chenin Blanc seeming to suffer the most for some reason.

This is super fascinating. Was it both a degree of heat and humidity? Or just humidity? I think about all the wine caves with high humidity…

While we’re off on a tangent, I have a related story of the effect of air temperature on perception of mature wines. An almost scientificky anecdote. At a summer (June) event at Ridge - Monte Bello they featured the trio of 95/97/99 Monte Bello, after a current release line-up, on what turned out to be the hottest day of the year. This must’ve been 10-12 years ago. They prep’d the bottles in the cellar and brought them up just in time, as it was so friggin’ hot out. The current release wines all tasted correct. The library trio all showed about 20 years more mature than they were.

I’ll note this was a 2 day event. People who tasted the Saturday, with more reasonable air temperature, all thought the wines tasted excellent and proper. People tasting Sunday, both with me and from different bottles over the course of the day had the same experience as us. There was enough feedback that Ridge invited some of us to come back up for a re-taste a couple weeks later, where they tasted as they should.

So, with the moderately mature wines at proper temperature, but the air temperature at around 96F, this effect was consistent over many bottles from 3 vintages over the course of the day. Something worth being aware of.

[Wes_Barton]

Differences you note due to humidity are almost certainly reflective of your own palate variation that might follow hotter, cooler, drier, wetter, etc., conditions. Not the wine itself.

It would change the various evaporation rates. So, the primary effect would be on what reaches your olfactory receptors and at what proportion. Of course the temperature something is when it hits your receptors has an impact, and the ambient temperature and humidity have an effect on you, probably both on input and processing of data.

[Alan_Rath]

Differences you note due to humidity are almost certainly reflective of your own palate variation that might follow hotter, cooler, drier, wetter, etc., conditions. Not the wine itself.

It would change the various evaporation rates. So, the primary effect would be on what reaches your olfactory receptors and at what proportion. Of course the temperature something is when it hits your receptors has an impact, and the ambient temperature and humidity have an effect on you, probably both on input and processing of data.

No, relative humidity does not affect evaporation of anything but water. That’s a common misunderstanding of the concept of partial pressures. Either way, my contention is that if local weather conditions do actually impact the perception of wine, it’s all due to perception, psychology, perhaps physiology, but not some real change in the wine itself.

[Wes_Barton]

I saw a post a few weeks ago (don’t recall who/where), where a producer was admitting some time in their past they tried picking by the biodumbantic calendar and it turned out wines they were very unhappy with, the pick days being too far from optimal for what they wanted to make. (I guess Captain Obvious was on vacation and the Holiday Inn was fully booked that week.)

[Fred_Daniels]

I agree CellarTracker is a great resource for this kind of research. Having been involved with wine for like 40 years, I have seen the “shut down” phenomenon a number of times. Some producers are known for it…De Montille for example. In the US, wineries like Arcadian and Culler (the 2004 Syrah is still barely drinkable, but it’s been improving)…I’m sure others can contribute. In my experience, shut down wines can be shut down hard…and taste like tannic water. Almost nothing on the nose or palate but structure. And then 5-10 years later they evolve into beautiful wines.

I am lucky enough to consider Joe Davis a friend, and have tasted a lot of the older Arcadians and can agree with you. Although Joe typically does not sell his wines until they are “ready”, and some bottles like the Pisoni and Francesa have incredibly long lives past when he’s initially offered them. I’ll post a tasting note from his 1997 Pisoni and let you know how it’s doing.

I’ll look forward to the note. Arcadian’s style of wine can yield scintillating results…I have a few bottles, but I don’t think I’m officially on their mailing list because I never get notice of any releases…I just buy direct from the winery from time to time. Love the half bottles!

[David_Patte]

This question has been addressed “scientifically” a couple times before… Mind you, not sure how well these explanations stand up to scientific scrutiny, but I’ve heard this particular explanation about polymerization of phenolic compounds from multiple people. And it seems to make sense.

Most recently from Doug Hein here: https://www.wineberserkers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3153685#p3153685

Regarding the shutdown, much of it has to do with chemistry. Many of the phenolic compounds in wine, like tannins, can and do polymerize. They also bind with other aromatic compounds that effect taste and aroma. The polymerization process is the start of the shutdown. These polymer chains continue to grow and link, binding up much of the flavor of the wine. At some point, they become to long to remain in suspension and start falling out as sediment. They also become unstable and weak and start breaking apart, releasing the other compounds that have been bound up. When this occurs, the wine starts opening up. It seems to happen fairly rapidly at both ends.

After the wine reawakens, then it’s really a matter of continuing evolution of the aging process and all of the slow reduction reactions ongoing in the bottle. The first phase is prominent primary fruit, integrated tannins and the lovely earthy nose of Bordeaux. Beyond that is the shift to more of the interest tertiary flavors and the gradual fading of primary fruit. Of course, all this and the timeframe is dependent on the structure of the wine. For example, that 2005 Leoville Barton that is drinking so well now, doesn’t have what it takes to be the wine at 35 years old that the 1982 Montrose was I recently had was. But it’s a wonderful Bordeaux to drink now and for another 10 years.

I think this makes a lot of sense but that we need to give more emphasis to the wine’s redox chemistry. Especially if we want to offer an account for why white wines shut down. To do this, we really need to factor in closure too, as different closures have different oxygen transmission profiles over time. But I think it’s clear that the higher a wine’s redox potential, i.e. the stronger its tendency to move in a reductive direction, the longer it will tend to shut down, all things being equal (which, thanks to closures, they seldom are!). So a low pH white with appreciable dry extract from the skins (flavenols and other antioxidants) will have a higher redox potential and tend to shut down harder and longer.

On wine chemistry, good points about redox points and tannin polymerization. I’ll just add that there are entire wine chemistry textbooks : ) full many more flavor compounds and species that change over time, some affecting or masking fruit and floral aromatics and flavors. Hard to summarize all of this but I’ll give it a shot on the main issues that I have experienced and have had drilled in me.

I currently have a Pinot that after month 6 started to show di- and tri-sulfides, masking the fruit. Perhaps the most well know is mercaptans, but there are more than a dozen of these compounds and they are unstable, changing with time based on the wine’s redox (which can change with an initial after-bottling bump (6mo.) and also includes slow in-bottle oxygen intake via the cork/closure). Volatile sulphuric compounds bring “swampy”, sulfurous vegetable (onion, cabbage, etc), burnt rubber, earthy, fecal, etc., etc., type odors. Keep in mind that at low levels they can be barely, or not very perceptible, BUT nevertheless mask fruit and floral aromatics and flavors.

Same is true for Brett.-caused phenols.

Other compounds that change during bottle aging include fruity and floral esters (branched fatty acid ethyl esters (soapy, oily, candle-like) increase over time; straight-chained (fruity/floral) ethyl esters decrease); terpenes (floral, progressive release over time due to mild acid hydrolysis); glycosylated compounds such as ketones (due to hydrolysis; a bunch of these from buttery, butterscotch, to exotic floral and fruit…); and lactones (oak lactones not only persist, but increase over time; there are also grape-derived lactones that do the same, e.g. in Gerwurztraminer which like Riesling significantly changes over time).

So… like Larry said, this is Holy Grail stuff because all of this chemistry can be happening more or less significantly depending on the grape varietal, how many of these compounds (or their precursors) were released during fermentation (juice YAN?, native yeast? cultured yeast? Daily, twice daily or rare punch downs? Pump overs or délestage? Total skin contact, or gross lees time, Etc), cellar maturation style (reductive or a bit more oxidative with battonage and rackings prior to bottling?), bottle storage conditions, and a host of other reasons.

[NoriY]

Interesting thoughts from the other posts. I think a lot of “shut down” wines have to do with air as other posters mentioned. Some start out vibrant but with air the tannins become more prominent. If you wait a few hours, they oftentimes come around again as the tannins soften (although I suspect people don’t 0wait that long). I think people call this shutting down as the tannins and structure becoming more prominent. The palate can seem more austere due to the tannins that overpower the fruit, and can happen around the same time the initial fruitiness of the wine dissipates naturally as it get exposed to air so it seems less aromatic although there’s still a nose. The wines that are completely unsalvageable from the get-go and never change are probably just bad bottles from bottle variation (another topic for another string).

Some of the primary fruitiness on release does naturally die down and integrate after a few years. I’m not sure I would call that shutting down. I think that’s normal maturation process of wine. Sulfur compounds do play a role undoubtedly and it does get more complex from here. As such, there’s no one-size-fits-all for predicting where you’ll catch a wine but again, I would argue this is part of normal (albeit sometimes unpredictable) evolution and not necessarily shutting down to the point you get nothing on the nose or palate. Older wines can be unpredictable so I know many who pop hours early and recork when the wine gets to a good spot.

For the comments about phenolic compounds, I would imagine that one could do an experiment on a wine that does “shut down” with air. You could get a mass spec readout on pour, repeat when it shuts down, and repeat when it opens up again to see what changes accounted for the difference. This would provide a more scientific answer to the question. However, I doubt that all the phenolic compounds go away as I mentioned above, so it’s probably more of a perception or amplitude of the signal issue than a complete loss of phenolic compounds.

[Marcus_Goodfellow]

Differences you note due to humidity are almost certainly reflective of your own palate variation that might follow hotter, cooler, drier, wetter, etc., conditions. Not the wine itself.

It would change the various evaporation rates. So, the primary effect would be on what reaches your olfactory receptors and at what proportion. Of course the temperature something is when it hits your receptors has an impact, and the ambient temperature and humidity have an effect on you, probably both on input and processing of data.

No, relative humidity does not affect evaporation of anything but water. That’s a common misunderstanding of the concept of partial pressures. Either way, my contention is that if local weather conditions do actually impact the perception of wine, it’s all due to perception, psychology, perhaps physiology, but not some real change in the wine itself.

Rise in barometric pressure will push CO2 out of suspension and pull lees up off the bottom of the barrel as it does.

As fine lees are pulled into suspension it increases bitter perceptions in the wine. Are the fine lees part of the wine? Guess that depends on whether you bottle the wine with any suspended lees…

Either way, in the real world there is a very, very distinct set of perceptive changes in the way a “wine” tastes that accompanies many local weather changes. Particularly in barrel, but also probably the a lesser degree in bottle as well, that are not changes in palate or psychology.

Not really relavant to this thread as these are not really about a wine shutting down, given that most local weather changes weekly while shut down phases are typically considered in years.

[Marcus_Goodfellow]

I saw a post a few weeks ago (don’t recall who/where), where a producer was admitting some time in their past they tried picking by the biodumbantic calendar and it turned out wines they were very unhappy with, the pick days being too far from optimal for what they wanted to make. (I guess Captain Obvious was on vacation and the Holiday Inn was fully booked that week.)

Who needs to taste grapes when you have a copy of the Farmer’s Almanac close at hand.

[Marcus_Goodfellow]

Last week I opened a 2019 Chateau des Chaintres Saumur-Champigny and the nose was very muted with no fruit and a slight TCA funk going on. A lot of people would have dismissed it as a bad bottle. But from experience, I knew that it just needed some oxygen and I decanted it. 30 minutes later is was good to go and at 1 1/2 hours it was singing. I wonder how many people dismiss a bottle being bad or in a dumb phase and don’t decant it?

Very much agreed, except for the TCA funk. TCA gets worse over time. If you can tell it’s there, it won’t go away.

[Marcus_Goodfellow]

I worked weekends at a winery tasting room many years ago. This is important because it means I got to taste the same wines and often multiple bottles of those wines every week. Most of the wines never changed during the entire time I worked there. Yes, there would be the occasional off bottle or just a bottle that tasted slightly different.

But we had a Merlot that was shut down hard when I started working there and stayed that way through up until my final few months. Until it opened up, I thought the wine was just a poorly made wine, probably the worst wine we sold. The two vintages that came after it were much better, more complex, better red fruit, some nice spice. This wine was a muddled black fruited mess with no acidity and offered little interest. Then it started to open up. The nose became more fragrant, the flavors more defined, the whole wine gained a harmony that it didn’t have before. It stayed that way for about a month and shut down again. It stayed shut down for another month or so at which point things get even weirder. Not sure if it was bottle difference or if the wine was really changing that much but each week seemed different than the one prior. Sometimes, it seemed more open and then back to shut down. Eventually, it settled out into a nice wine, nothing spectacular but much better than I originally thought it would ever be and it maintained this new profile up to the point when I left.

That experience has convinced me that talking about shut down is difficult when we generally only drink a few bottles and often those bottles are separated in time by months. I don’t know how we know shut down from those few data points. We as wine drinkers often build up a belief that a certain type of wine shuts down at a certain age but do we really have enough data to make those claims? The three merlots that the winery made were all from the same vineyard and treated basically the same. The ripeness was similar and yet only the one wine shut down and the other two didn’t. Why, I have no clue.

The vascillation of the shut down bottle between open and shut down may be due to closure.

Corks are all unique and individual corks have different densities and porosity(in addition to differing amounts of TCA). It’s reasonable to guess that at the point it was always a shut down wine, none of the bottles had reached the evolution of being “open”. And it’s unlikely, given variability of corks, that all the bottles would suddenly reach the “open” state at the same time. Since you were tasting them very, very regularly, random chance would give you that see-saw of open and closed until the wine reached a point of evolution where a high percentage of bottles had reached the open plateau and your likelihood of whichever one you open being good would be high.

I don’t think I am totally following you. Why would the final change be more random than the prior change? If the bottles had all been “closed” the entire time prior to reaching the period of vacillation, I understand how it could be difference in getting to the next phase and related to cork differences. Where I lose that argument is the two periods before where all bottles tasted were “open” and then later “closed” again. It seems to me if it was differences in rate of change/cork variability and the randomness of which bottles were opened that there should have been less distinct differences in this time period. I do believe that I tasted enough bottles in each phase described that differences should have been noted and were not.

I wasn’t there, and this theory isn’t fact, it’s a guess.

But a month of being “open” is within the parameters of random chance. It basically would mean having a coin flip come up heads 6-8 times in a row(you worked weekends, so 2 bottles per weekend times 4 weekends). While flipping a coin should eventually wind up at even, statistical analysis says that there will be periods in the early stages where the balance weighs to one side or the other even though the coin flips are random.

Not saying this occurred, just that being open a month and then closed again, and then waffling back and forth would actually not be unusual.

[Brian_Gilp]

The vascillation of the shut down bottle between open and shut down may be due to closure.

Corks are all unique and individual corks have different densities and porosity(in addition to differing amounts of TCA). It’s reasonable to guess that at the point it was always a shut down wine, none of the bottles had reached the evolution of being “open”. And it’s unlikely, given variability of corks, that all the bottles would suddenly reach the “open” state at the same time. Since you were tasting them very, very regularly, random chance would give you that see-saw of open and closed until the wine reached a point of evolution where a high percentage of bottles had reached the open plateau and your likelihood of whichever one you open being good would be high.

I don’t think I am totally following you. Why would the final change be more random than the prior change? If the bottles had all been “closed” the entire time prior to reaching the period of vacillation, I understand how it could be difference in getting to the next phase and related to cork differences. Where I lose that argument is the two periods before where all bottles tasted were “open” and then later “closed” again. It seems to me if it was differences in rate of change/cork variability and the randomness of which bottles were opened that there should have been less distinct differences in this time period. I do believe that I tasted enough bottles in each phase described that differences should have been noted and were not.

I wasn’t there, and this theory isn’t fact, it’s a guess.

But a month of being “open” is within the parameters of random chance. It basically would mean having a coin flip come up heads 6-8 times in a row(you worked weekends, so 2 bottles per weekend times 4 weekends). While flipping a coin should eventually wind up at even, statistical analysis says that there will be periods in the early stages where the balance weighs to one side or the other even though the coin flips are random.

Not saying this occurred, just that being open a month and then closed again, and then waffling back and forth would actually not be unusual.

Got it. Way too long ago to remember accurate time periods or numbers of bottles tried. Randomness is possible.

[NoriY]

[duplicate post deleted]

[Alan_Rath]

Rise in barometric pressure will push CO2 out of suspension and pull lees up off the bottom of the barrel as it does.

Is this the conventional wisdom most winemakers believe? Because it’s not true.

[David_Bu3ker]

Rise in barometric pressure will push CO2 out of suspension and pull lees up off the bottom of the barrel as it does.

Is this the conventional wisdom most winemakers believe? Because it’s not true.

Seems like it would be the exact opposite.

[John_Morris]

Last week I opened a 2019 Chateau des Chaintres Saumur-Champigny and the nose was very muted with no fruit and a slight TCA funk going on. A lot of people would have dismissed it as a bad bottle. But from experience, I knew that it just needed some oxygen and I decanted it. 30 minutes later is was good to go and at 1 1/2 hours it was singing. I wonder how many people dismiss a bottle being bad or in a dumb phase and don’t decant it?

Very much agreed, except for the TCA funk. TCA gets worse over time. If you can tell it’s there, it won’t go away.

+1

If there was TCA, that won’t dissipate with air.

[David_Patte]

Rise in barometric pressure will push CO2 out of suspension and pull lees up off the bottom of the barrel as it does.

Is this the conventional wisdom most winemakers believe? Because it’s not true.

Right, I was taught to rack under high atmospheric pressure (if possible!) because CO2 will be less prevalent and will not stir fine lees. This is kind of tricky in Oregon in the winter

[Alan_Rath]

Rise in barometric pressure will push CO2 out of suspension and pull lees up off the bottom of the barrel as it does.

Is this the conventional wisdom most winemakers believe? Because it’s not true.

Right, I was taught to rack under high atmospheric pressure (if possible!) because CO2 will be less prevalent and will not stir fine lees. This is kind of tricky in Oregon in the winter

I’d think about it like this: variation in barometric pressure on any given day is well under 1%, only with more severe storm fronts would you see greater than that. I’m skeptical that this small variation is enough to make a noticeable difference in CO2 behavior, even if that’s a factor. Then consider that a barrel of wine isn’t a can of coke; you don’t have 3 atm of CO2 captured in a sealed container, waiting to bubble out when opened. Honestly, I think this is probably one of those things winemakers have been led to believe through folklore, more than science.

[David_Patte]

Is this the conventional wisdom most winemakers believe? Because it’s not true.

Right, I was taught to rack under high atmospheric pressure (if possible!) because CO2 will be less prevalent and will not stir fine lees. This is kind of tricky in Oregon in the winter

I’d think about it like this: variation in barometric pressure on any given day is well under 1%, only with more severe storm fronts would you see greater than that. I’m skeptical that this small variation is enough to make a noticeable difference in CO2 behavior, even if that’s a factor. Then consider that a barrel of wine isn’t a can of coke; you don’t have 3 atm of CO2 captured in a sealed container, waiting to bubble out when opened. Honestly, I think this is probably one of those things winemakers have been led to believe through folklore, more than science.

You may be right. This was handed down to me verbally. Nothing in my textbooks about it and I just tried to search the research literature and nothing comes up.

[John_Glas]

Just drink it over 3 days and see if it is open for business.