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Questions raised by a "cooked" wine

Among the bottles I brought to Thanksgiving dinner was a 2001 Trimbach Guwertraminer, which I picked up from a wine shop that I had visited for the first time. I knew I was in trouble when I removed the capsule and saw a sugary residue on top of the cork. Upon examination of the cork it was obvious that wine had been pushed around it at some point. Tasting the wine revealed that it was dull . . . very muted flavors of apricot, maybe, if I used my imagination. Anyway, all the symptoms that point to a wine that was "cooked", i.e. saw too high of temperatures some time in its distribution between the winery and my Thanksgiving dinner.

I was curious if people see this type of thing occasionally, and when you get a cooked bottle what do you think? Does it cast doubt on the merchant, his distributor, or someone else in the supply chain? Rather than a corked bottle--which seems more like a spin of the wheel as a bottle from the same case will probably be fine--a cooked bottle seems like it points to a larger problem with how a shop sources or stores its wines . . .

justin

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Justin
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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

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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

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Anders Tørneskog
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Mark Willstatter
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Mark Willstatter

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