Extremely low fill/evaporation level

[Peter W. Meek]

On Sunday (11/1) I was looking over 3 bottles of Dow's 85 that I had just purchased. Two were filled high in the neck, but the third was about 2 inches below the shoulder of the bottle. I would guess that about a quarter of the wine was missing. The bottles looked as though they had been through the same history: labels were scuffed similarly; dirty in about the same way.

I opened the short bottle to see if the wine was damaged. There was no sign of seepage. In fact the cork was stained only about 1/2 inch up. After a sniff, I decanted the wine, rinsed the bottle (not much sediment), and poured the wine back into the bottle (filtering again through a coffee filter). It got quite a bit of air during the decanting/rebottling, so I had a taste and passed the bottle along the bar for some other port aficionados to try. I liked it, Mike liked it, but my wife made a face and said, "Get me some ice cream or some pancakes." It was a bit sweet, but not way out of the range of Ports I am familiar with. (Mike and I are fans of Pedro Ximenez, so we evidently can appreciate extremely sweet Iberian wines.)

What do you all think happened to this bottle? Under-filled to begin with? Stood upright for too long and the cork dried out? Something else that I haven't thought of?

I recorked it, and had it set back in the store-room. We had some more again on Wednesday. It seemed mellower; more integrated. Eva said it was still too sweet, but, to her, the taste and smell had improved.

Has anyone run across anything similar? Do you think that evaporation has concentrated the sugars, making it overly sweet? Nearly 1/4 of the liquid was missing by my estimate. It wasn't overly (or even noticeably) 'hot' or alcoholic, so evidently at least as much or more alcohol as water was missing.

I love wine - an adventure in every bottle and no two the same.

We will finish it off on Sunday, and I'll report back on any changes.

[Derek T.]

Peter,

This really does sound like a case of under-filling at the bottling line. I can't imagine that so much wine could have been lost from a 1985 with no signs of leakage and what sounds like a sound cork. If by some means the wine had evaporated through the cork then surely the wine would have been very oxidised and gloopy.

It would be interesting to know how this bottle would compare with another from the same batch with a high fill. If there is no significant difference it would suggest that our paranoia about fill levels is somewhat misplaced!

Derek

[Peter W. Meek]

Well, I have two more, but I was intending to save them for a bit. We might open one in December, but my memory for tastes and aromas is not the best.

[Derek T.]

Well, I have two more, but I was intending to save them for a bit. We might open one in December, but my memory for tastes and aromas is not the best.

That's why it is good to write tasting notes

[Peter W. Meek]

If you've seen any of my "tasting notes" you may recall that they are more about what happened, what the wine was paired with, than what the actual tastes and aromas were. I'm just not very articulate on those aspects of wine. I take nice label pictures, though...

[Peter W. Meek]

Finished it up tonight. It just got a bit softer after being open a week. Still over-sweet to me.

Along side was a popped and poured 1992 Warre Colhieta (b 2005) which seemed quite nice, but could have used a little air-time.

[Peter W. Meek]

I can see that I'm going to have to supply a couple of port decanters, a proper glass funnel, cheesecloth, and instructions to the bartenders at Paesanos. Then I can call in early in the day, or the day before, and have ports decanted properly.

[Roy Hersh]

It is really hard to speculate on something like this without having been there or at least seen visual proof in a photo. Nonetheless, I am wondering if this was just a case of "bottling line error" wouldn't you have noticed the shortfall ... er, short fill, when you put this into your wine storage? I can't imagine being able to ignore the appearance or at least, weight differential of that bottle.

When you mention Mike, is it the Mike I am thinking of, who lives near Ann Arbor? Besides Chaad, who else is in your merry group of Port enthusiasts?

[Peter W. Meek]

I took delivery at the bar at Paesanos - a bit dark as bars sometimes are. The bottles were sitting on the bar and I was looking at each, preparing to put them in a bag to take home, and I just happened to catch the reflection of a light from the top of the liquid.

A closer look with my trusty penlight and it was revealed that the level was about 2" down from the point where the shoulder starts. i.e. 2" down into the fully cylindrical part of the bottle; below the top of the label. I checked the other two and the fill was just below the cork - maybe .75" down.

I was curious about what had happened to cause this and without thinking about whether I should accept the bottle (or whether or not title had actually passed to me), I opened the bottle. It certainly became mine at that point. If it had been corked, I might have made a case for "concealed damage" but it wasn't. The cork itself was clean except for a little staining at the very bottom - no sign of leaking at any time. It came out easily (a little loose, even) with my regular wine key. Firm from end to end.

As I said, it was very sweet, but did not seem thick or syrupy to me. I suspect you are right: it was simply a serious underfill from the time of bottling. If you remember the discussion on "heaviest bottle" the weight of the bottle is almost half the total weight, so missing 4 or 5 ounces of liquid won't be noticeable unless you are looking for it and have another bottle to compare. The glass is quite dark.

This also calls into question whether some of the bottles discounted or avoided at sales might be, in fact, perfectly good, but just filled a bit short. It makes "signs of leakage" much more important than fill levels, at least to me.

We'll try one of the other bottles when you visit. Perhaps Mike or Eva can describe any differences.

Oh, and Mike, in this case, is Mike Bittenbender, a master wrench at a local auto shop, and one of the small band of Port fanciers that hangs out at Paesanos. It could have been (but wasn't) Mike Roddy, owner and proprietor of Paesanos. The other enthusiasts are mostly staff members there who may drift in and out of our dinner as their other duties allow. If there is another Mike in the area who likes Port, suggest to him that we meet sometime and get acquainted. I'm up for it.

[Andy Velebil]

The cork itself was clean except for a little staining at the very bottom - no sign of leaking at any time. It came out easily (a little loose, even) with my regular wine key. Firm from end to end.

Based on the cork having no staining except on the bottom of it, that doesn't imply any type of leakage issue. But I can't say I've ever seen a bottle of VP that had been under-filled from the bottling line. Not saying it couldn't happen, but in all the bottles I've opened I've never seen that to be the case.

The loose part about the cork probably allowed some liquid to evaporate. An easy explanation if the bottle has been stored upright all these years. And why the cork had just a little bit of staining at the bottom.

[Peter W. Meek]

The cork itself was clean except for a little staining at the very bottom - no sign of leaking at any time. It came out easily (a little loose, even) with my regular wine key. Firm from end to end.

Based on the cork having no staining except on the bottom of it, that doesn't imply any type of leakage issue. But I can't say I've ever seen a bottle of VP that had been under-filled from the bottling line. Not saying it couldn't happen, but in all the bottles I've opened I've never seen that to be the case.

The loose part about the cork probably allowed some liquid to evaporate. An easy explanation if the bottle has been stored upright all these years. And why the cork had just a little bit of staining at the bottom.

It wasn't too loose; just easy to remove. A nice "drag" all the way out, but not difficult to remove. The staining at the bottom of the cork came up the side about a quarter inch (6mm). I've never seen a low fill that I could be sure was low from the bottling, either. But then, I don't have all that much experience with VP and most of my tawnys have been just the Nimrod.

I would have expected some more intense "faults" in the wine if that much liquid had evaporated. Possibly oxidized (after all if liquid is gone, air has replaced it), an increase in thickness (water vapor and alcohol vapor would be what has escaped; sugars and solids would remain).

It was merely a lot sweeter than I would have expected. Possibly it takes more oxygen than the 20% times 3-4 fluid ounces that was missing to oxidize a bottle of wine. If the cork was just tight enough..... No, that won't work: if it was loose enough to allow water/alcohol to escape, and air replace it, the whole system would have been pumping air in and out with every change of barometric pressure. That bottle would (I think) have been almost as badly oxidized as if it were uncorked and allowed to sit open for weeks.

What ever the explanation, (unless it was just a low fill), I don't think we have hit on it yet. Remember, it was in association with 2 other bottles which had similar scuffing on the label and other appearance features. I think these bottles had been together for most or all of their "lives". It might be possible that the other bottles were laid flat while the low bottle was upright as a display. This would imply that the bottles had come back from a retailer and been returned to the part of Michigan's 3-tier distribution system where my "wine guy" bought them. Given the rigidity of the system, this seems unlikely to me.

Anyhow, we will be opening a second bottle in a month, so we will be able to determine if that particular VP is a lot sweeter than I expected, if so that will lend credence to the low fill theory. If it isn't exceptionally sweet, it will lend credence to evaporation theories and we may revisit this topic.

(New theory - way down the likelihood list - someone used a syringe to sample/pilfer the wine and we didn't notice the tiny hole in the capsule.)