I personally wouldn't sweat three hours at 78. That's not a long time, and the wine takes a while to get to same temp as air. I would be very unhappy with 3 hours at 90F, or 72 hours at 78. But 3 hours at 78 wouldn't panic me. I WOULD check corks and capsules- the temp change is pretty drastic, and could lead to cork failure.
Dale
Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply
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!
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