Victorwine wrote:Oliver wrote:
What's the basis for 'may not be apparent for days, weeks, or years'? I've seen this suggested many times on the internet but have never understood how it was possible.
I agree with Steve, a wine that has been apparently “cooked” will now take a “new” path as it continues to bottle age. It comes down to this Oliver, scientist do not yet fully understand the science behind “bottle aging”.
Salute
So...let's assume that a higher temperature
may trigger some threshold chemical reactions that wouldn't occur at a lower temperature.
So it launches the wine on a "new path" of aging in the btl. And perhaps it is possible that the products from these threshold reactions are
notsensorarily apparent until further down the road. What, automatically, makes these threshold reactions produce "bad" reaction products? Maybe they could actually produce "good" reaction products?? (They possibly can...see below).
There is no evidence for these threshold chemical reactions that I'm aware. Don't know chemistry very well, though.... I'm just a simple lil' ole country computational physicist. But let's discount them for now and go with the rule that chemical reactions double for each 10C rise in temperature. So if you wine spends 6 hrs...wherevere...at 90F. It would....given that the cork seal remains intact...therefore make sense to store the wine at 30F for a day or two and everything would even out and the wine would be the same as one that stayed at 60F its entire life?? Seems plausible to me...given the caveats above.
There are those who would argue that these temperature flucations "stress" the wine and can "fatigue" it (attributing anthromorphic characteristics to wine can lead to some flawed conclusions, I think) and the wine will not be the same. Maybe...but I tend to doubt it.
What we do know, recalling from a UC enology text I havent revisited in a number of yrs....they did a study of accelerating aging of wine by heat (also did one w/ vibrations/sound effects...and w/ gamma rays as I recall). The result was that the heating of the wine
did produce the increase in bottle bouquet (complexity) that was associated w/ bottle aging, on a shorter time scale. But, accompaning this, was an increased loss of fruitiness as well. So the "science" says that heat is harmful to wine, according to that study.
I think nobody in their right mind would dismiss the effect of heat on wine as being harmful. I've got some old wines standing out in my garage for 10-15 yrs that are pretty good examples of what a "cooked" wine is like. Pretty dreadful stuff..DNPIM.
But what I'm suggesting, and I think Oliver is implying and Robin seems to believe, is that maybe...
just maybe...wine is not quite as fragile as we seem to believe and can possibly withstand some higher temperatures better than some people suspect. And...like Oliver...I think some people may be attributing flaws in a wine...or a wine's failure to meet their expectations....to a "cooked" character or some heat damage along the way into their cellar.
Of course, I prefer to have my wine delivered to me from Calif at a perfect 60F, or prefer to have it delivered in Feb rather than in June. But I sometimes have a case show up in June or July, when the temperature in these here parts is in the low 90F's (seldom gets above 100F here).
I've yet to see any pushed corks in those wines. And...when I rip open those boxes...the wines are cool to the touch..maybe upper 60F's or low 70F's. Of course, I have no idea what has happened to the wine as its crossed Nevada or Arizona or central NewMexico. But it's not something I lose a whole lot of sleep over. I think some people can be a little anal on the subject. I know one guy that, if it's 2-day air delivery, and it shows up bright and early the next morning, will automatically reject it as (possibly) heat damaged, not even open the box, and automatically send it back to the wnry and demand its replacement. He's not a very popular guy w/ some of the winemakers I know.
There's a lot of unknowns out there...most of it anecdotal and folklore. In many cases, there is no "science" that is known on the subject..just handwaving and assumptions. In most cases we have no idea what kind of conditions a wine has been subjected to in its journey from the wnry to our cellars. I suspect some of us would be apalled at the treatment our wine receives along the way. Some may be due to heating. I had an '05 Roussanne a few weeks ago. I loved it when I first had it a yr ago. This btl had a great nose, but almost no flavor and virtually no finish. Last night, I had an '03 Viognier from that same producer. Incredibly short/almost no finish. It would be easy to just say that it was obviously suffering from heat damage along the way...based on no evidence I know of. I just sorta shrugged my shoulder, decided the wine delivered below my expectations, and went on to the next wine w/o much thought.
Anyway...just my random thoughts on the subject...not that I'd know Jack$hit anyway.
Tom