Hi, everyone. I am new to the site. My name is Melissa. My husband and I were drinking a bottle of our favorite Chardonnay from a local winery here in Temecula (I won't name it!) and after pouring myself the last glass I noticed a few minutes later that there was something in the bottom of my glass. I looked in the light and saw that it was some unknown sediment as well as a small worm and a very, very small almost translucent spider! Has anyone heard of such a thing? I was horrified. I've drank a good amount of wine in my life and I've never had this experience before. Is this something that happens from time to time?

The answer is obvious, just say no to Temecula wine. I've never had spiders and worms in my wine bottle, but I haven't had much Temecula vino either. There's a reason they're a backwater wine producing area.

You can get some decent stuff (Hart's Sauv. Blanc), but most is swill.

I'll go out on a limb. . .Calloway?

Bugs happen.

They come in on the grapes, hang out during fermentation, and crawl around the winery.

In good winemaking you try and eliminate as much as you can from getting in the wine and then in the process of 'racking' the wine you also hope to get out any bits. The final thing you do at bottling is filter the wine.

There are all kinds of degrees of filtration and at very minimum you should use what is called a screen filter. That basically does not effect the wine at all but keeps out particles greater than 1mm.

A lot of small wineries bottle by hand, and they don't use screens. Some others have heard the phrase "unfiltered" so much that they tell the bottler to not use a screen.

In any case, you should complain to the winery. That's gross. A chardonnay especially should have gone through a cold stabilization and some degree of filtration. I'd expect to find a bug bit in maybe 1 in 10,000 bottles (or less) under normal bottling conditions. Two bugs in one bottle is seriously messed up.

eat it! with tequila, you have to pay extra for the privelege!

quote:

Originally posted by TBird:
eat it! with tequila, you have to pay extra for the privelege!

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA....now THAT is just what I expect from you! Hope all is well, and thanks for the great chuckle!

Chances are the bottle wasn't properly cleaned and it got in that way. I had a miniature of whisky once that had an insect in it. Fortunately I spotted it before I opened it and sent it back to the distillery.

Same thing happend to friends and I about one month ago with a bottle of red from a Santa Barbara producer. At first my friend thought it was a large piece of sediment, but nope!, turned out to be a bug about half the size of the fingernail on my pinky finger. We were at a wine bar, and they quickly replaced the bottle with extensive apologies (didn't get comped, though, which would have been nice...maybe even appropriate(?)). The wine was actually very good (the second bottle -- I didn't have the privilege of trying any from the buggy bottle), so I will let the producer remain anonymous. Nobody got sick, although it was sickening...makes for a good story.

quote:

Originally posted by Brashley:
The wine was actually very good (the second bottle -- I didn't have the privilege of trying any from the buggy bottle), so I will let the producer remain anonymous. Nobody got sick, although it was sickening...makes for a good story.

Regarding the miniature (50ml) I mentioned earlier, we sent it back to the distillery.
They sent back a rather nice letter apologising and explaining how it probably happened and what they would do to fix it. They sent back a 375 as compensation.

Unfortunately as this had happened when I was in the UK, the return address I gave was my brother-in-law. When I asked him how it was he gave me the classic tasting note: "Tasted like a flea's arse".