Re: 3 bottles of Latour 2000 and 3 bottles of Lafite 2000 spent 3hrs at 78deg...

Ha ha, yes, I will up that to 12 bucks, and come and get them at your house ;-))))

Look, the stress you describe is equivalent to driving them home from the vineyard on a summer's day in an air conditioned car, then putting the bottles in the fridge for 3 days.

Your bottles are fine.

Mike

Try going to either chicago wine school (chicagowineschool.com, I think) or wineexp.com. They're about the only two that actually respond to anything.

My experience is limited, but given that Latour 2000 is a huge, tannic red, I'd suspect that the damage done to it will be subtle at most. You may not want to age it quite a long as various pundits suggest, but it will almost certainly still provide enjoyable drinking and age nearly as well as it would had the temp never varied from 55 F.

HTH Mark Lipton

You won't be able to detect any degradation, assuming you have the background to compare (seriously; not being a smarty pants or anything). Just keep them back in the 60 for a few years anyway, as you'd want to do even without your temperature fluctuation - those are huge wines. But just in case, I'd be happy to help you taste them!