Chateau Haut Brion 1985

HI, Just to add that it's 750 ml (75 cl) bottle.

I see 5 types in the link below - the only difference between them are the grapes. If these are indeed my wine, how can I tell what grapes the wine is made from? Thanks again.

That image is Ch. Haut Brion, and it is an expensive wine. 1985 is a nice vintage. Quarterly winebid (a US auction site) average price for a 750 is $368. Before you get too excited, you should read the FAQ of this group

Selling as an individual with no track record on winecommune.com, IF the bottle is in good condition and ullage is ok, you'd probably get $200-250.

As to grapes, HB is a Bordeaux from the Pessac-Leognan (Graves) region, and uses 3 of the permitted grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc.

Hi, Thanks for that information. Here are answers to your questions.

Rgds.

Ullage is the space above the cork that you can see through the neck below the metal capsule. The level of the wine should be right below the end of the cork.

If you aren't a wine person, selling it is probably the way to go. Even if you do enjoy wine, you might want to talk to a local wine shop or private wine fans - they might be willing to swap you (maybe up to a full case) of something you'd enjoy for the one bottle.

I would guess that there is less than a 5% chance that the wine is still drinkable if in fact the bottle was stored in an attic for 24 years. I'm not sure where you are geographically but most attics aren't heated or cooled and the temperature extremes in a northern climate could freeze the wine in the winter and cook it in the summer. In a hot climate it would certainly be cooked to death in a very short time. If by the grace of the wine gods the bottle is still in pristine condition you have a wonderful bottle of Bordeaux that should smell like cedar, tobacco and leather with a hint of barnyard......and that's the way it's supposed to smell.

Hi, Thanks for your replies. I found the bottle in Ireland. It would not have frozen and there's no chance of it cooking in the type of Summers we have ;-) but I understand what you mean. Unfortunatly there's no way of finding out what the wine is like unless it is opened I suppose. I'll probably take your sugegstion Bill S. and just see if I can sell it or swap it. Thanks all, and I learnt a new word - Ullage! :-) Ciao.

It only takes a few minutes in temps above 80F to "cook" the wine and it's entirely possible for the temp to get to 90F in Ireland. Optimal storage temps are around 55F and under optimal stroage the wine would now be showing a bit of age. If you sell it just make sure to be honest about the storage conditions.

I think that this statement is misleading.

If you heat wine into the 80s, it will definitely degrade it, no question, but the way you phrased that, one would think that if you took a bottle out of the cellar and stood it in a room that was 80 deg. it would be toast in minutes.

Wine actually has termendous thermal inertia and it will take a considerable time (hours not minutes) to warm a bottle to the point of damage (or to cool it - I've monitored the cooling process with a thermometer in a cellar that took a couple of days top get down to temperature.

All that being said, it doesn't really affect this case as wherever the bottle was, it was there for a long period and would have attained ambient temp.

If the bottle is a standard bottle (750 ml) and the surroundig medium is air, the time needed for the content of the bottle nearing its average temperature half-way to the ambient temperature is somewhere between 40 and 45 minutes (for average glass bottles; ultra-heavy bottles need some extra time).

If the surrounding medium is water, the process is much faster: 12 to 15 minutes for half way of the temperature difference between water temperature and the content of the bottle.

That's why 20 minutes in the fridge for whites with room temperature will never work, and that's why buckets (with ice

I personally have the advantage to live in Vienna, Austria: Our tap water round the year never surpasses 10°C/50F. Right now it's

M.

I didn't mean to mislead but 24 years in storage over 55F would have a poor effect on the wine as would a short amount of time at very high or low temps. Studies have shown that wine deteriorates quickly at high temps like in the truck of your car for an hour or so in the summer or in a non climate controlled shipping dock. Certainly I didn't mean to imply that the wine would be destroyed in minutes at

In any case there is a very high probability that even in Ireland it was ruined, or too ruined to sell in any case. There are hot spells in the 70s F even there, and in an attic, especially under slate or tile, it was likely to have gotten toasty indeed.

-E

I don't mean to say that all this is wrong, but how does one explain some cases when storing wine in bad environments results in good results? Case in point - the best wine I've ever had, had been stored probably for 8 years in a cupboard on a balcony. It was a 1996 Mavrud, and I had it in 2005; the location was Sofia, Bulgaria, where temperatures in summer can reach 35C (sometimes 40) in the summer (well in excess of 90F), and below freezing in winter. True, it is a north-facing balcony, so no direct sunlight, and it was obviously never gotten too cold in the winter to freeze it, but you get the idea. The wine was absolutely fantastic - bone-dry: I subconsciously expected to see chalk powder floating on the surface, and incredibly smooth, as if drinking liquid silk. Not even a hint at annoying sweetness, mild perfect acidity, subtle leather notes. I was going "aahh.." in rapture after every sip. What do you think happened to make this wine that way?