Tales of Actual Heat Damage

After a lot of shipping season worry stories, I started to feel that we as a crowd are kind of weak-kneed about how sturdy our wines are. I noticed a lot of posts about fears about what might happen (something awful) along side some more soothing tales about what usually does happen (nothing). In fact, I recall that one berserker (can’t remember who) was doing a test by letting a bottle roll around in his trunk for a while, to taste test it next to one that was in his cellar.

So here’s another data point, or something:

I was feeling blasé about it when I put three mixed cases of wine into my garage a month ago – I have an offsite, but I didn’t get there that quickly. It was in the 70s, the nights were in the 50s, the roof is white, and the thermometer I have in the garage never went much above 73. Then, one day, it was 79. I can’t swear it was just 79 that day, and to be fair, it’s possible that the temperature got that high 3-4 days before I removed the wines and properly stored them. But if it was 79, it wasn’t that high continuously, just for a few hours of the day.

And the wines, by and large, are ruined.

Nothing in there is that delicate (I think). I drink mostly California cabs, Bordeaux and French regional wines. There wasn’t any (say) Burgundy there.
I don’t have a handle on the extent of the damage yet, but I’ve been tasting through, and some really nice stuff is very dead. A 2010 Tempier Bandol, a couple 04 Pontet Canets, a Jean Edwards Stagecoach, a Les Rouliers, all shot. The symptoms are either that the wine is like port, it has an ashy aftertaste, or it’s just weird and astringent, followed by port and ash.

On the other hand, a Gravette de Certan was great, and so was a Di Costanzo, and a different Jean Edwards. Seemingly unaffected. I can’t figure out if there’s a varietal that’s more sturdy or if it’s just luck of the draw.

This is the second time I’ve had wines actually go south because of heat – last year, when it hit 106 in San Francisco, the sun shone directly on a couple of bottles of Ridge and those just went belly up instantly. But this new situation was weird to me – I genuinely thought upper 70s wasn’t a deal breaker.

G

I find heat damage is a bit like aging to hyper-aging wine, unless it gets into mid-80s up for consistent times. Even wines I have left in a garage or trunk don’t go belly up, so my experiences don’t mirror yours.

Sorry you lost some nice wines, that sucks.

You’re saying the temperature reached 79 max for maybe up to 3 days? I really can’t imagine that ruined your wine. I would argue that temp isn’t high enough to do much at all, certainly not for the few hours the wine itself reached that temp (if it ever did). I have bottles at home that are for near term drinking during the summer. My house regularly gets to 79 or more throughout the summer, and I’ve never opened one of those bottles and found it heat damaged.

I agree, there are lots of retail stores with wine on the shelf at 72-75 degree temps for months, I haven’t noticed heat dmg.

+4

+5

When I’m opening something, I’m always hoping the tasting note would read better than “It wasn’t ruined”. If a bottle is shipped during challenging conditions, it will almost always drink well, but generally not as well as a pristine bottle opened beside it. But, to make matters more complicated, the challenged bottle can sometimes be better in the short or medium term than the pristine bottle, esp if it’s a bottle that will benefit/improve with age *. But overall, it’s rare for me to prefer a bottle that was challenged over one that wasn’t…doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it tho.

• There’s Madeira, which proves it’s difficult to speak in generalities about wine. There are great bottles, not great wines (wrt older wines), being a notable exception here.

I know – me, too. And I’m really willing to believe in an alternate explanation. But I had these cases in storage, then they were at the temperatures I’ve described, then they went back into storage, and the result is that more than 50% of them are cooked. Maybe there’s a cyclotron running under the garage, maybe I brought them too close to fire-breathing dragons that I didn’t notice, maybe I just have run into a really random set of bad wines, anything is possible. But I’m just saying this is what happened. Maybe I’ll figure out some extenuating circumstance.

are these wines all from the same shipment? maybe it happened during transport and not during your watch?

A max temp in the garage of 79, and unsustained, doesn’t seem high enough to cook so many diverse wines (condolences), but how else to explain? Daily 20-degree swings are pretty wide, but it was only a month. I assume no signs of seepage or excessive cork staining on the ruined bottles?

Explain “ruined”.

I really really don’t think all of your precious wines are ruined from a few days at 79 degrees F. Perhaps there are little fairy mice circling the bottles incanting evil spells against the Master’s wine? Who really knows.

Don’t be a jerk about it. He bought a bunch of wines which all showed heat damaged so at a minimum it’s a case for sympathy. He’s also puzzled about the circumstances and is taking the time to warn us about his experience.

Sorry. Just surprised a few days at what I would call not extreme temps would do this. I think heat damage is something that is difficult to tell unless you have had pristine bottles earlier: you know something is missing and wrong but sometimes cannot put your finger on it.

Two questions:

One, where is the temperature measured?
Two, where were the wines stored?

The reason I ask is that the temperature is not uniform throughout the garage in all likelihood. If the wines were on the floor, the temp there was likely a few degrees cooler than where the thermometer is located. My basic conclusion is the temperature where the wine was did not even get to 79. Even if it had, that is not “too hot” for the wine. So if there was heat damage, it was not from the three to four days in the garage.

My apologies as well. I overreacted to what I read as a belittling attack.

anyway, it depends on how bad the heat damage is whether it shows as something missing or actual maderized flavors (which I’ve certainly encountered).

Like others, I am skeptical that a couple of days at 79 could damage the wines noticeably, but then I don’t want to believe it could. I can’t think of another explanation though.

We had a '11 Guado de Gemoli a week or two back and when I popped the foil off the cork was making a slight “T” shape over the lip of the bottle which led me to believe that maybe it had gotten hot early on in its life, and lo and behold, it was mostly stewy and alcoholic and never resolved over the couple days we were checking on it. We’ve had other wines with signs of “pushed” corks with no ill effects (most notably a mag of '11 Foillard Cote du Py that was one of my WOTYs in 2016). What does and doesn’t cook wine is baffling sometimes. Sorry you lost some soldiers!

Well, 79 in Florida is an opportunity to shut off the AC and open the windows! Gotta say I don’t see any heat damage with wines that I don’t have room for in my wine fridge.

Glen, over this time period how have other wines tasted to you - wines that are not part of this collection? How did the wines get back into storage - did you drive them yourself or were they picked up? What do you know about the storage provider?

I’ve never had wine get ruined by heat. But as another data point… I’ve got temperature-controlled storage in my house for about 200 bottles. Everything else sits in racks in my house. Here in New Orleans the ambient temperature is 73-75 in that area almost year round. The only times that’s not true is a) when the power or air goes out in the summer (not often, thankfully), or b) the ambient temperature drops in the winter. Even with b) there’s many days above 70 in my house.

Now anything ‘nice’ bottles or bottles I do not intend to drink for 3 years or longer are in the temperature-controlled environment. Several hundred bottles are not - they’re exposed to the 73+ temps, day in and out.

I’ve had some bottles sitting out for 3 years or more now. Are they advanced? Hard to say, but I haven’t noticed. Though honestly I haven’t done a comparison of like bottles between cold and room-temp storage. But I’ve never had a wine be noticeably advanced and certainly not shot. And again that wine is spending over half the year at 73 and above.

I believe what Glen is experiencing is real but it just seems like there’s another variable here being overlooked.