1. Home
  2. General Wine Forum
  3. Expensive Pinot went bad rather quickly, I thought

Expensive Pinot went bad rather quickly, I thought

My sister-in-law was taken out to dinner on Wednesday night and the wine was an '03 Savoy Vineyard Pinot from a winery by the name of Adrian Fog. The winery is based in Sebastopol, California (Southern end of the Sonoma Valley), but this vineyard is in the Anderson Valley (up closer to Mendocino).

Anyway, she and her date only drank about a third of the bottle ($150 on the wine list), so she took it home. She kept it corked, but out on a counter, where temps may have reached 75 degrees Farenheit, then brought it to our house last night (Sunday- 4 days later). She says it tasted fine again on Friday (day 2), but it was like fermented raisins tonight.

I know she could have refrigerated it, and maybe it would have been better longer, but I didn't expect it to be that bad that quickly. I've refrigerated red wines for a week or longer (albeit using a VacuVin) and found them still drinkable, if usually rather flat and fruit-less. Most of what I read says that refrigeration will only add a day or so, but I haven't found that myself.

How predictable was this?

Reply to
Midlife
Loading thread data ...

Four days open is a pretty long time - especially in this age of unfined, unfiltered low sulfite wines. Maybe that was just too long for a delicate varietal like Pinot Noir.

Tom S

Reply to
Tom S

Tom,

Low sulfite I get, but it sounds like you feel unfined, unfiltered wines have a shorter shelf life. That's very interesting. Care to elaborate?

We can take this off-line if others aren't interested.

Andy

Reply to
JEP62

Please keep it online.

Reply to
Steve Slatcher

I'd say pretty predictable. 4 days is a long time in half-empty bottle with no refrigeration (I think chilling AND reducing oxygen - either smaller bottle or maybe vac-u-vin- would make it last), for a wine that's probably rather fruit-forward low-acid to start with.

Reply to
DaleW

Sure, but I wasn't implying that they have a shorter _shelf_ life.

It seems obvious to me that if you leave all the floating organisms in a wine at bottling, they'll have a jump start on spoiling the wine once it's opened and exposed to air - especially if it's bottled with low free SO2.

OTOH, a sterile filtered wine that has sufficient free SO2 at bottling should be much less sensitive to air exposure, and has no intrinsic spoilage inoculum present.

Tom S

Reply to
Tom S

Reply to
stephentimko

For the last 2 vintages, all of the Conundrum in AZ has been under stelvin. Since ours never hangs around more than a few days, and it's always stored in the refrigerator, I've not had any go bad. Also, I have yet to return a bottle in the last 2 years, while I averaged about 1/cs under cork. I know this doesn't specifically address your question, but offers a bit of data, around the cork v stelvin issue and Conundrum.

Hunt

Reply to
Hunt

I guess I've always assumed that the wine going down hill after being opened for too long was due more to oxygen exposure than spoilage organisms. This would definitely be hastened by low SO2 levels, but I'm not sure that sterile filtration would really impact this one way or the other.

Andy

Reply to
JEP62

That's probably true, at least for relatively short air exposure - say several days.

The main problem with the wine in question was probably insufficient free sulfite at bottling, which rendered it vulnerable to spoilage from oxygen exposure over the course of several days. High pH may have also played a part in the proceedings.

Tom S

Reply to
Tom S

How much sulfite, and how low the ph to get a pinot to survive 4 days at room temp and in an open environment??????

Reply to
gerald

DrinksForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.