To be clear, the only one of their locations that they advertise as offering wine storage is at their Minnetonka location, which is advertised as being temperature controlled. One assumes Steve’s wines were stored there, and that he picked them up there. The fact that they may have locations whose basements are not temperature controlled is totally irrelevant to the OP’s issue.
However, since Steve apparently didn’t make the original delivery himself, who is to say if they were stored in Minnetonka the entire time? Two questions to ask is how long the Minnetonka location has been there, and how long it has been temperature contolled. Assuming the store has been there and was temp controlled the entire storage period, and assuming Steve’s wine was actually there for the duration, Steve is up a creek without a paddle. And if that’s the case, since the wines were not permanently damaged by transport, I would expect the wines will come around with more time to settle.
I’ve explained my theory elsewhere that travel shock doesn’t exist. So I will be surprised (and chastised) if these wines “come around” with more time - particularly as it has already been over a month since they were moved. But I look forward to hearing more about how they taste in future reports.
I agree with you that travel shock does not exist, when you define it as you did in the other thread, namely giving the wine time to settle after transport. I don’t recall seeing the OP state how long after transport he waited to open these first bottles, nor did he state how long the bottles had been stood upright prior to tasting, or what the decanting protocol was like, if any. Given that they weren’t 50 year old red burgs, I would think a few weeks after transport would be plenty of time.
I believe that their Minnetonka store is where they store all of the held wines. I stored there for a few months back in in 2002- I hand delivered my cases to Minnetonka and was denied entry to view the storage area (basement) and was told that only employees were allowed down stairs.
Many thanks for this information. It has been about 7 weeks since the wine was transported. I have very little hope left that the wines will come around.
Alan, on July 4th, 3 weeks after transport, I opened: 2 x Ridge Montebello 2000, Ridge Montebello 2001, Mondavi Oakville Cab 1997, Vieux Telegraph CDP 1998, Mount Eden Old Vine Reserve Cab 1997, Quilceda Creek Cab 2001 and a Pesquera Ribera del Duero Tinto 2001. These I expected to age and drink well then and into to the future. I have also opened the following wines, all of which seemed to have no fruit left but it may be that these weren’t produced to stand up to lengthy aging: Chateau Fourcas Hosten Listra Medoc Bordeaux 2000, Hedges 3 Vineyards 1999, St Clement Napa Cab 1997, D’Arenberg The Footbolt Shiraz 2001, Steltzer SLD Napa Cab 1999 and Wynn’s Coonwarra Micheal Shiraz 1997.
I think with most of those your expectations are completely reasonable. Just last week I was at a tasting of 9 1992 Cab-based wines, mostly California, at a similar level to the wines you listed, and almost all of them were still pretty youthful.
Alan, add another bottle to the list - Mondavi Napa Cab 2001 Reserve.
This one I tasted with a bit more rigor to the process. The wine had been resting horizontally at 55 degrees F for 7 weeks since transport. 23 hours before opening I removed it from storage and stood it vertically, cork up. At opening I decanted, using a funnel that both filtered the sediment and provided aeration.
I observed that the cork was flush with or slightly below the lip of the bottle. It did not appear to have been pushed up. The cork came out without drama and did not appear to be dry. The bottle itself showed no signs of seepage. Ullage, if present at all, wasn’t material.
At pouring/decanting the wine was deep red in color. There was some aroma of fruit, but nothing floral or complex. There was a pronounced, alcohol/hot sensation in the nose. At tasting the wine had none of the soft, full, velvety feel in the mouth of a fine, aged cab. Though there was some hint of fruit, it was a bit watery- little body - with an acidic, hot alcohol taste. The after taste was sour.
An hour and a half after decanting the hint of fruit was almost gone. The sharp, hot alcohol burning sensation in the nose remained. The wine tasted bitter, and hot in the mouth, possibly with a hint of moldiness. The after taste was acidic and sour.
Echoing this. As a former Mpls resident, I shopped there several times back in the day and had mixed results with back vintage wines offered on their famous “sales”. YMMV, but it would be great if some of the current Mpls Berserker crowd would weigh in with their thoughts…
Steve, thanks for that detailed note on the Mondavi. So let’s explore one other avenue: is there any possibility your taste sensation has been disrupted somehow? Have you been drinking other wines, not from that stored batch? And do those all taste “normal”? There have been stories of people who got sick (for example), and took weeks or even months to recover their normal taste sensations. Only asking because the things you describe about the wines you have opened just don’t point to any kind of “damage” I have experienced with wine.
I live in Minnetonka and have bought older vintages from them and not noticed anything wrong with the storage of the bottles in the shop. They have a lot of older Burgundy/Bordeaux that they sell at high prices. The temps in MN are pretty famous for swinging from extremes so if a door would be open on a hot humid day I could see how over a 12yr time frame there could be a problem. I’ve never stored anything with them so can’t say anything about that. Sorry for your collection. It doesn’t seem like it was climate controlled storage.
Ouch, more tragic that losing your wine collection would be losing the ability to enjoy wine! While I do have a miserable cold at the moment, I have had others with better palates than mine (even at its healthy best) sample bottles and all have opined that the wine ranged from unpleasant to undrinkable. I do struggle with the right adjectives to describe what I’m tasting and this surely hampers my ability to convey to you what I’m experiencing. It seemed to me that the wine had very dramatically prematurely aged such that there was no fruit left and this could be the result of improper storage over a period of time at higher than appropriate temps.
Next on my list, when the cold subsides, is to do a side by side tasting of a bottle from the collection against a bottle of the exact same wine which I purchased last week. If both taste the same, and bad, then that will be a good indication that I have a bigger issue than just restoring my wine collection.
This thread brings back memories and some parallels. Some 20 years ago I transported my wine, about 250 bottles at the time, from New Hampshire to Minnesota. It was a long journey time-wise and started at the beginning of June. I bought a very large old freezer, loaded it on a rental moving truck, and packed it with my wine and ice (not dry.) The first leg of the trip went through NYC and ended 2 days later in Wisconsin where my wine was stored at my brother’s non- air conditioned warehouse for the summer. I finally got the wine to a house I rented Minneapolis in the Fall and ultimately into the basement of the house I bought later that year.
2 years later I was going to be out of town a lot so I stored my wine for about 6 months at Haskell’s. (When I picked it up they seemed a little surprised and disappointed that I didn’t leave it there longer.)
After all that I am still drinking wonderful bottles from that trip that survived such abuse with flying colors. The only real damage was about 2 cases of 1995 and 1996 White Burgundy that was oxidized, but then, we know that could be another kettle of worms.
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