Yesterday I was given a recommendation for a wine shop that’s nearby my house. Today I popped in, and I’m a little bit blown away. The selection is great, and the pricing is really good too. Most interestingly, they have a lot of back vintages. In my quick look around, I saw 2011 Oddero Barolo, 2012 PdP Barbaresco, 2014 Evesham Wood “Le Puis Sec”, and a 2009 Ponzi PN.
How concerned should I be about these older wines’ storage conditions? Some of them have apparently been sitting on a shelf at air-conditioned temperatures for a decade or more. If I buy some of these up, should I plan on drinking them in the short-term? Or do you think it is safe to stash some of these (particularly Barolo and Barbaresco) away for another decade?
nobody can answer that for sure for you though many, myself included, will try. Buy a couple of the most suspect bottles and open them. See for yourself. My guess is they are advanced if at room temp for a decade. That’s why we cellar wines, to preserve them . . .
I’d pick up the Evesham Wood as a good, relatively inexpensive, test. Assuming the temp is relatively constant, I find that these sort of passively stored bottles can be just fine. The bigger issues I’ve noticed are wild swings in temp, sustained high temperatures, and intense UV conditions.
Just how good is “really good”? For me this is the question. My guess is not good enough to cellar super long, but might just be good enough to take a flyer on and consume near term.
One nice thing is that apparently you don’t have to make a decision immediately or lose them. They have been sitting there for almost a decade.
Somebody else local might have already found the answer to that question.
First off, where is this store? I am in Indy and would love to visit. Secondly, I worry about this all the time locally. There are a couple of stores that have “cellar” like rooms that are temperature controlled in Indy. Khans has a great temperature controlled room with a great selection and several of the liquor stores (total wines) have good rooms. If they are not in one of these rooms I typically ask if they were purchased recently or were held in a cellar.
All I can say is that I have purchased from both Khans and Total and all of the wines have been good so far.
I always worry when ordering from a wine shop or, at worst, liquor store that has to be shipped. I try not to do that and only purchase from members here or from known sellers, but sometimes that isn’t an option. So far I have been fairly lucky except for some I purchased on here a while back (that was partially my fault because some of the bottles showed signs of wear).
For the benefit of local folks, this was Payless Liquors, an independent liquor store at the corner of 146th Street and River Road in Carmel. The selection is quite impressive, with lots of boutique/family-owned brands. In fact, I noticed that WB’s own @Dave_Paige was well represented.
As I peeked around, it seemed like about half the prices were regular liquor store prices, and half were less than expected. You could find cheaper prices on WineSearcher, but then you’d have to pay shipping.
The story I got is that the previous buyer over-bought, and so the current wine manager is trying to clear out stock. (But I don’t know how accurate that is.)
I did end up opening the 2014 Evesham Wood with dinner. It was still in good shape, but It was clear that the fruit was starting to fade. By way of comparison, I would say it was much more advanced than the 2013 Temperance Hill (?) and 2012 (?) Souris that I recently tasted when visiting Goodfellow in McMinnville. So while I won’t plan to cellar any of these, I will be stopping in to pick up wines for immediate drinking.
I also picked up a 2012 PdP Barbaresco that I plan to open sometime over the Christmas holidays. It will be interesting to see what that’s like since Nebbiolo has a reputation for being longer-lived.
Good to hear they’re still supporting, hopefully that lasts with the new buyer!
I don’t know that particular wine from Evesham Wood, but it’s not a shock that something from the 2014 vintage would be starting to fade a bit. The 2014s came across as a bit ripe, not a great sign for ageability. They’ve been tasting great, just not built for much longer in my opinion. The 2009, even more so. Some of them were a but jammy for my taste, and have already faded.
Charles - unless you’re buying from the winery/chateau/bodega, your wine will never have been kept in pristine conditions from bottling until you purchase it. Does that account for the dreaded “bottle variation”? Who knows, but it may.
But if you ever buy wine from the southern hemisphere, there is never a good time to ship because it has to cross the equator. From Europe, maybe you can avoid shipping in the heat of summer. You can get refrigerated containers or insulated containers and ask to have your container below the water line, but you have no idea how long it is sitting on a loading dock at the beginning and end of its journeys. And then it’s trucked across the country. Hopefully it’s kept cool all the time. But then it arrives at the warehouse and once again you’re on the loading dock. Then it gets to the store.
I’ve seen cases stacked outside on the sidewalk in Manhattan in 90+ degrees, and it wasn’t just for a few minutes. Some places turn the AC on when they get into work, and maybe the AC is off all weekend. Some places don’t run AC at all - I’ve been in stores in Europe where the wine is simply on the shelf for a year, two years, or much longer.
The point is that most wine is a lot hardier than people think it is. Is it ideal to have your wine on a store shelf for years? Probably not, but buying a bottle of wine is a bit like getting a rescue dog from a kill shelter - you take it home and love it but you have no idea what kind of abuse it’s been through before you got it.
And some wine, like some dogs, gets kicked around a lot. If you found decent wine at decent prices and the wine has some age on it, I would go for it. I’ve bought bottles that were covered with years of dust and they were fine. Best of luck!
One note about the 2014 Evesham is that it might not have sat on the shelf as long as you think. Because Evesham didn’t produce any of the vineyard designates in '20, and had a large library of '14s and '15s, they took the opportunity about a year back to offer a large(ish) library release, dominated by '14 & '15 LPS. The wine’s really great, imo, but it could be that those Ital & Ponzi wines are a better barometer of storage conditions.
