Questions raised by a "cooked" wine

Yup.

A cooked wine casts doubt upon the entire distribution chain. For instance, there are still importers who ship their wine across the Atlantic in the summer in unrefrigerated containers or who let their cargo sit in an uncooled warehouse after arrival here. The same holds for the distributors, who may warehouse wine for months in abysmal conditions. Finally, even the retailer may store his wines improperly. In the end, you must learn what importers and retailers to trust (or, conversely, to avoid). I don't know how easy it is to return a cooked wine to the retailer, but if you have a whole case of them, I'd certainly give it a go.

Mark Lipton

Actually not uncommon with sweet wines and not an automatic sign of danger, imho. However, an Alsace Gewurtztraminer should be fairly dry... so, yes, that bottle was probably poorly stored somewhere along the transport route. Anders

Leakage is a not uncommon problem with German wines both sweet and dry

- as I understand it, German winemakers are for some reason resistant to the use of vacuum corkers. The resulting pressure in the bottle can mean leakage when the it is inverted after bottling even without heating. Whether that problem extends to the French side of the Rhine, I have no idea.

- Mark W.

Hihi

This reminds me of a very similar experience I had last summer with a couple of Alsace Gewürztraminers. Unfortunately I can not seem to find my notes and do not remember the names of the wineries or even the year. The wines were very dull and sugary with a mild fruit flavour (vaguely like litchi).

A very unfortunate experience considering that I had bought the wines in Paris on a trip and carried them home to Frankfurt with considerable effort. They were not exactly cheap and they took up precious available carrying capacity, so the opprtunity cost was even larger.

Now I wonder if it was because of the way the wine-seller and I stored them. It was famously hot last summer in Europe and the bottles were un-refrigerated when I bought them. How long were they stored like that before I bought them, I do not know. I also kept them un-refrigerated (though away from direct heat or light) for a 3-4 days until I reached home.

Could someone please explain the "cooking" effect? How long an exposure creates it?

Thanks in advance. Cheers

Hihi,

Would a bit of seepage lead to such a collapse of the taste?

I usually carry a couple of bottles of Mosel or Nahe wines for my friends when I travel to Asia from Frankfurt, since these are not so easily available there. Almost invariably, I have a few drops of seepage during the pressure variations during the flight. But IMHO the taste is not impacted in an appreciable negative way.

Cheers

My experience is that a little seepage doesn't cause any harm at all - only if it's so extreme that you start getting fill level problems is there an issue. It's completely possible that there was nothing wrong at all with the wine that started this thread - having seen the seepage, Justin suspicions might have colored his impressions of the wine. Justin didn't mention that he had tasted other bottles of the same wine - Trimbach is a reliable producer but noboody is successful all the time. In other words, maybe this was just a dull wine. Or perhaps it was mildy corked - that could also account for muted fruit flavors. Or maybe it was cooked somewhere along the line. There's no way of knowing but I wouldn't take a little seepage as evidence of damage, particularly in wines from that part of the world.

- Mark W.

I did have an opportunity to have a second bottle of the same wine just the other night, and this one didn't seem to be exhibiting the same signs of leakage on the cork. I thought that the second wine did surpass the first (somewhat) in overall complexity--I thought I got some honey, a little more spice (peppery), and possibly some slight fuel characteristic (like kerosene) and it was a little more rounded--however, in retrospect, I may have been a little harsh on the first wine too

I am surprised that leakage is may not be uncommon in these wines . . . I'd be interested to know, also, if Alsace may share the same practices.

justin