Hi, I'm new to wine.
I have bottle of German Riesling in the $30 range that I've had sitting on my kitchen counter in a small rack for 1 year+. I read on here that wine can go bad due to temperature?
I do not cool my apartment when I am not home so in the Michigan summer it often goes above 85 - 90 degrees in my place. Is my wine probably bad?

I would drink it now rather then later. Cooked? Probably not but aged it will be.

Damaged but drinkable thru the end of the year. Put it in the fridge until October

What vintage is the wine and what wine is it?

I agree that you should plan to enjoy is sooner than later. I once put my wine out in my shop for what was to be just a couple of days in the spring while we did some remodling. It ended up being there for almost 3 months because of delays. The wine suffered temperatures over 90 degrees for a good month before I recognized what I was doing to it.

Only one out of 24 was totally spoiled by the heat and the rest did not sit around very long either.

Actually I would like to know how much heat and for how long in that heat does it take to cook a bottle. Is there a scale that show the heat time "continuium" that can guide us?

I forever suffer the summer months because I won't order wines I want because of the heat.

Board-o, the wine is a Weingut Max Ferd Richter brand, 2003 Vedenzer Elisenberg Riesling Auslese. Mosel-Aaar-Ruwer.

I don't know anything about wine, but I tasted this in Chicago in July 04 and bought a $30 bottle immediately.

Thanks all for the tips thus far.

Open it soon. It may not be cooked, but it's certainly at least prematurely aged. It might still be very good.

You certainly didn't do the wine any favors letting it sit in that kind of heat.

to address eagle's question, i'm not sure if there's a definitive rule* for how hot any wine needs to get and how long it needs to be at that temperature before it becomes cooked. (and cooked itself is on a continuum!)

to add another variable, the perceived damage could vary, based on the wine style. a jammy, high-alcohol zin might seem less affected than a delicate, lean sancerre.

as the folks on the board advised, it's best to drink this wine sooner rather than later. the reason: if it's been slightly damaged by the heat, that damage will get magnified over time.

alternatively, gloverbo could conduct an experiment (yup, my handle is the schoolmarm for some reason). you could enjoy a couple bottles now and then taste the rest over time to see what happens with them -- and then report back to us.

... what time's the party, gloverbo?

*wine is a living thing, with nearly infinite variability; i've found that the more i learn, the more i realize that there is to learn. i tend to teach beginners rules -- and then show them a few ways that each rule is broken. that's part of what makes wine so darn fun.

cheers!
gloria