How about cooked wine?

Hi spo. It looks as though you've got a few questions in here, which makes answering your post a little more complicated.

First, to get vinegar, you need acetobacter (a type of bacteria), which is usually not found in clean wineries.

How can you tell a wine is cooked? It may smell of nuts or sherry or stewed fruit instead of having the vibrant fruit flavors that it's supposed to have. A slightly cooked wine may have dull aromas and flavors. Another clue for cooked wines: the cork might be pushed up a bit and there might be some wine dribble coming from under the foil (because the volume of wine increases when it's heated).

A single spike of heat can break the seal on the cork and expose your wine to oxygen. If this happens, I advise drinking the bottle ASAP. Seasonal fluctuations that don't get too hot or too cold are okay; the wines in my basement are still holding up okay. You do have to worry about more frequent fluctuations.

Extended exposure to warm temperatures will speed up the aging process. This is not a good thing. You can't rush mother nature; the wine doesn't really gain in complexity; instead, it simply gets tired and old before it's time.

Shipping wine in refigerated containers is expensive. Sometimes wines are exposed to heat en route and a few are damaged. I don't know about numbers, but I can say that in a couple decades of tasting wines from all over the world, I haven't encountered enough cooked wines to worry about shipping conditions.

Hope that helps.

as ever schoolmarm,

great answer!


i would like to add:

i beleve that a wine that has exposed to a highter temprature highter as 22-24°celsius even for a short time,
is encumbered for aging.
and it dos not age as well as a bottle with perfect colling-history.
about how long it take for a damage, i don't know, personally i would ask, why do you think it will need more than just a moment?

yes, i think most wines are sold, had some when a highter temparature.
the diffrence, you can see at winerys like robert weil, they have a "feine auslese" 1949 in fresh conditions, never left the cellar, do you beleve to buy somewere in a store a bottle of that, that is in same conditions?

the problem is that as it cant be controlled, you would have to be critic but also belever.

great line of thought here...
my 2cents...
I live in central Arizona, the wine purveyors for all of this area come out of Phoenix. Can't buy a wine in this state that does not go through Phoenix. Their warehouses are usually refrigerated, but some of the reps say that some corners of the storage room are hotter than others.
The trucks that deliver all have refrigeration units. Most work, some do not. I have had wine delivered to the restaurant I work at that seems as if it was put in the back of a car trunk for the two hour drive north to my place: hot, drippy, smelly.
The drivers, for the most part, don't get the need for temp and handling controls. They're just truck drivers.
-----------
As a side note to cooked wines and storage, my "cellar" gets to 80 degrees (or more) in our hot summers - 100 degrees F outside - to 40 degrees F in the winter. I opened a 95 brunello that seemed flat and lost most of its fruit. This bottle had been there for three years.
My friends all joke that I speed up the aging process in the summer, and stop it in the winter. Schoolmarm, what do you think?
All joking aside, I'm buying a wine cooler.

my cellar is dark, wet, and cold, only in hot summerdays i do have to get the clima-cooler to turn on.

winter the cellar has from 43f to 50 naturally
summer the cellar 57 in normal days and in days that outside tempratures go up to 95f the cooler dos hold it at maximum 62f.

i dont like to cool all year arround to holt it at 50f all time because of economy, oecological and the lost of fill-level reasons.

thanks for the observation, asv, and the question. i'd be inclined to agree with your friends; although some seasonal fluctuation is fine, 80 degreees is pretty hot and 40 degrees is pretty cold.

makes me think of the christmas cartoon (i think it's "the year without a santa claus") with mother nature's two sons, the heat miser who could never have it too hot and the cold miser who could never have it too hot. (hmmm... i'm thinking about christmas so it must be july.)

anyway, sorry for the digression (mea culpa, but it is a holiday weekend). to conclude, i would certainly suggest a temperature-coltrolled wine cellar for you, and the brunello.

I'll tell ya,
Having lived in Texas, if you leave a case of wine in the trunk of your car on a 104 degree day, it will taste pretty dang dull.

Hey, Teacher...at what temperature does champagne freeze?

Tsunami, can you convert those numbers into celsius, please.

mein keller ist dunkel, feucht und kalt, nur wenn es draussen an sommerlichen tagen 35 grad warm ist, schalte ich das klimagerät ein

im winter hat mein keller 6 bis 10 grad jeh nach kälte des winers und an normalen sommertagen
geht die kellertemperatur auf 14.
wenns draussen 35 und mehr grad hat, hällt das klimagerät den keller auf maximum 17 grad.

eien converter findest du auf converter


ich habe auch fertig - tsunami

Schoolmarm,

Thanks for your reply. I was beginning to think no one was going to answer. I know that was a lot
of questions thank you for tackling each one. Everytime I do not like a wine I wonder if it is tca tainted, cooked or just my lack of class. I am the obssesive type but now I think tainted and cooked bottles happen only so often.

Thanks Tsunami. My cellar is dark and wet as is yours, but has no
air- conditioner build in. During the hot summer months, temperature
rises up to 19-21 C. In those days I add some watter to the cellar, since
it tends to keep the temperatures further down.
Do you control the level of humidity when your clima- cooler is on?

i have a tempratur/humidity mesuring aparat.
(feuchtigkeits und temperatur-messgerät)

when the cooler runs (like now),
i trow most of the water it go's in a container,
back on the flor.
sometimes i do hang long wet towels every were.
but only in years like 2003, when the cooler has to run and run and run....

i wont accept that the wines go up to 19-21!

there is quite a money and culture in the cellar, i wont be happy to let it develop badly.
that is the reason my winecellar is 1 hour drive away from were i live.

btw.
look in internet, ebay, and stores
some of the asian brands are not as expensiv as they were earlier.
maybe you can find an used (from a coolhouse)
(restaurants haben einen kühlraum) they work perfectly and maybe you find one foe 110-300 euro.

quote:

Originally posted by tsunami:

that is the reason my winecellar is 1 hour drive away from were i live.

One hour of drive from you could be anywhere
from Germany, Austria, Italy,...

,

yes that's correct. but is't still in switzerland,
it's the only one "gemeinde" on the east side from the rhein river but belongs to us and not to austria.

quote:

Originally posted by redwine&redsox:
I'll tell ya,
Having lived in Texas, if you leave a case of wine in the trunk of your car on a 104 degree day, it will taste pretty dang dull.

Hey, Teacher...at what temperature does champagne freeze?

I left a bottle of Estancia cab in my trunk for a couple of weeks (temperatures are over 90 degrees) and then in my garage for 2 months. I opened it up...it smelled of cooked fruit but it was unbelievably drinkable. I don't suggest anybody try this at home.

quote:

Originally posted by Bella Donna:

quote:

Originally posted by redwine&redsox:
I'll tell ya,
Having lived in Texas, if you leave a case of wine in the trunk of your car on a 104 degree day, it will taste pretty dang dull.

Hey, Teacher...at what temperature does champagne freeze?

I left a bottle of Estancia cab in my trunk for a couple of weeks (temperatures are over 90 degrees) and then in my garage for 2 months. I opened it up...it smelled of cooked fruit but it was unbelievably drinkable. I don't suggest anybody try this at home.

I am never going to trust one of your TN's again.

quote:

Originally posted by seanr7:

quote:

Originally posted by Bella Donna:

quote:

Originally posted by redwine&redsox:
I'll tell ya,
Having lived in Texas, if you leave a case of wine in the trunk of your car on a 104 degree day, it will taste pretty dang dull.

Hey, Teacher...at what temperature does champagne freeze?

I left a bottle of Estancia cab in my trunk for a couple of weeks (temperatures are over 90 degrees) and then in my garage for 2 months. I opened it up...it smelled of cooked fruit but it was unbelievably drinkable. I don't suggest anybody try this at home.

I am never going to trust one of your TN's again.

Dude...why not? Even Tyra had a taste and she said there was something slightly wrong with it but she could still drink it.

Thin or cooked

quote:

Originally posted by redwine&redsox:
Hey, Teacher...at what temperature does champagne freeze?

Short of freezing a bottle of bubbly myself, here are some temperature points I found online:

Crystals begin to form: -4C/25F
For making sorbet: -22C/-8F
Disgorgement: -25C/-13F
Ideal serving temp: 7C/45F

Let the games begin, but be careful to point the top of the bottle away from people when popping the cork. The pressure inside a bottle of bubbly is about 4-5 atmospheres/80-90psi at 20C/68F, or about 3x the pressure in your car tires (unless it's an exceptionally hot day in Texas).

I have not froze bubbly but I did try freezing some 2 buck chuck. Between 10 and 14 degrees F. the wine froze and pushed the cork. Alcohol content is a very big factor in determining the freezing point. This bottle was a 14.3% alcohol.

i have a question regarding cooked wine. if the cork is elevated isnt that a sign? and if so if the cork is elevated by a 32nd of an inch, or a 16th of an inch should i be concerned. thank you p.s. first time responding to a forum so im sorry if i did it wrong

jabby,

You have done nothing wrong (except maybe cook your wine). Sometimes the corker on the line doesn't always get the cork fully into the bottle and might make someone think it has been exposed to heat. Can you spin the foil on the bottle? If so, then you may not have had any damage. If not, then I would be willing to say it has a good potential for heat damage. If you are worried, drink up and don't hold it any longer. Report back and let us know your thoughts.

Cheers!

great advice from benchland... if you think you've cooked a wine, drink it asap. you've got nothing to lose and it'll only continue to decline in the bottle.

just make sure you have a back-up bottle on hand if you're testing it with friends.

" don't know about numbers, but I can say that in a couple decades of tasting wines from all over the world, I haven't encountered enough cooked wines to worry about shipping conditions."

Yeah I received a few shipments in the heat and the wines were fine. If I had a serious cellar and was going to age expensive wines I would be more careful but for now I do not care.