The 1999 Dom Perignon Heat Damage Challenge - The Results

Will the 1999 Dom Perignon suffer from heat damage?

My homage to the GOAT (greatest of all threads) by Mark B (Drinkxie) The 16-bottle Chardonnay Blowout Challenge If you have not read this thread then stop now and click on the link, it’ll be the best 15 minutes of your WB life.

The Question: Will this bottle of Champagne be good or bad. Has heat damage destroyed the wine? I will post a tasting note with the results.

The Background: I acquired a bottle of 1999 Dom Perignon on release that I stored in my cellar for the last 13 years, more on that later, as a birth year wine for my god daughter Carly who was born on Thanksgiving Day November 24, 1999. The plan is to open this bottle on her 21st birthday.

The Cellar: Below is a picture of my cellar. It looks much like a coat closet because it is a coat closet that I highjacked from my wife.

The Condition: This where it gets interesting.

• 13 years in the closet
• No temperature control in the cellar just room temperature year around
• I live in Southern California
• We don’t use the air conditioner or heater - maybe 5 times a year. Crazy, I know
• The Champagne spends at least 6 hours a day for 4 months above 80 degrees
• Not uncommon for the room temp to be 85 degrees for a month in August
• Daily bottle temperature swings average 15 degrees

This is a graph of the average temperature in Mission Viejo, California.

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The Results

Clearly - wine is significantly more stable than most people believe and the threat of heat damage is vastly overstated. So the time someone’s cellar cooler craps out and the wine spends a few days at 75 degrees refer them to this thread where a bottle of Dom spent more than 120 days a year at 75+ for 13 years

• 1999 Moët & Chandon Champagne Cuvée Dom Pérignon - France, Champagne (11/27/2020)
  Medium gold color. Very fine bubbles and an exquisite mouth feel - prickly yet soft - very interesting. Reminds me of Krug in that perspective.

Aromas of light caramel, medium plus toast, almond slivers, and apple sauce. Palate is very good, a very strong yellow apple flavor with bracing acidity. With all the acid is thought I would pick up lemon or green apple, nope, just the yellow. The creamy caramel note emerges mid palate and remains through the finish.

Beautiful bottle of champagne opened for Carly’s 21st birthday with Kim, Chris, Rosie and Taylor.

Posted from CellarTracker

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Unfortunately I think you’re very likely to see heat damage.

I’ve had champagne that’s been perceptible altered for the worse in conditions much less extreme than that. How good the champagne will be I have no idea but not a bad idea to have something as back up.

When I told fellow berserker Chris Seiber about this he offered a 1999 from his cellar as a backup. That’s a good friend!

My guess is that it will be heat-damaged, but, obviously, my hope is that it’s not. And, my man, all those other wines in there!

Happy momentous Birthday to Carly!

Remember the heat damage challenge Bob did at OCPoker4Wine?

3 bottles of Avalon. One stored in his cellar, another on the counter, and the third in the trunk of his car.

The trunk bottle was fried. LOL

My guess is not heat damaged, but maybe less fresh and youthful than a perfectly stored bottle.

Here is the cork. It pulled out very easily and the neck never mushroomed or expanded. The cork fit right back into the bottle. Never seen that in a champagne or sparkler before.

Very dense cork, like a rock. Maybe corks don’t like California’s low humidity and warm temperatures?

I did a similar “experiment” with a 96 DP in my parent’s cabinet in South Texas. An air conditioned home, but the sun fell on the cabinet such that I suppose the temps were higher inside. Near 100% humidity year round. Sadly, while on its side, the cork contracted and failed, yielding vinegar of the finest pedigree.

One more data point before I start carving the turkey. Here’s a picture of wine in glass. I don’t have much experience with DP, mostly grower, so don’t know how this color compares.

I would describe it as medium gold.

Looks fine to me

Perfect colour.

I would be able to tell, but not something Neal Mollen could.

My experience is that vintage aged champagne, in particular Dom, do not “mushroom” much when open.

Interesting. The bottle isn’t going to be prisitine and will likely show more development than normal, but it still might be okay. If the temperature graph you showed can be correlated over to the storage closet then things probably aren’t too bad. It looks like you have enough mass in the closet to keep the bottle temperature from any quick swings and my guess is the bottle fluctuated from the low 60s to the low 70s across the year. My first concern would be cork failure (losing the seal), but if the wine still has true effervesence and not just bubbles that briefly appear in suspension and then fade away then you made it across that hurdle. Color doesn’t look too bad either. Let us know.

The results are in and the bottle was beautiful. Good news because I have 250 other bottles I store in the same condition in the closet. BTW - I’ve never had a bottle I thought was heat damaged from the closet in the 15 years I’ve used it.

The cork, as Brad mentioned, was a big concern because I think it’s possible the drying out of the cork could be a bigger factor in wine flaws than temperature.

Clearly - wine is significantly more stable than most people believe and the threat of heat damage is vastly overstated. So the time someone’s cellar cooler craps out and the wine spends a few days at 75 degrees refer them to this thread where a bottle of Dom spent more than 120 days a year at 75+ for 13 years.

FYI - this bottle was stored on its side for the last 10 years.

• 1999 Moët & Chandon Champagne Cuvée Dom Pérignon - France, Champagne (11/27/2020)
  Medium gold color. Very fine bubbles and an exquisite mouth feel - prickly yet soft - very interesting. Reminds me of Krug in that perspective.

Aromas of light caramel, medium plus toast, almond slivers, and apple sauce. Palate is very good, a very strong yellow apple flavor with bracing acidity. With all the acid is thought I would pick up lemon or green apple, nope, just the yellow. The creamy caramel note emerges mid palate and remains through the finish.

Beautiful bottle of champagne opened for Carly’s 21st birthday with Kim, Chris, Rosie and Taylor.

Posted from CellarTracker

I do remember that pretty well. One of the three bottles was badly corked, which screwed up the experiment.

Glad your 99 Dom ultimately showed well. That’s pretty incredible!

“Clearly - wine is significantly more stable than most people believe and the threat of heat damage is vastly overstated.”

I’m going to offer this post not to be argumentative, but to just provide a counterpoint. It would be unfortunate if anyone from this really simple experiment drew the conclusion that temperatures don’t matter when you store wine.

I have no experience with this kind of experiment with champagne. However, I have extensive experience with the same experiment with all sorts of red wine. If that bottle had been a good 2000 Pauillac, and if you tasted it side-by-side with another of the same bottle stored properly, there’s no doubt in my mind it would be very obvious that one was stored differently than the other.

My guess, and I obviously can’t prove it, is that had you compared it to a similar 1999 DP, you would’ve observed differences between the two wines.

Again, I have no desire to argue and I am not trying to be a jerk. I’m just trying to prevent someone from making a mistake and thinking that their coat closet is an acceptable place to store fine wine for many years.

All that said, I’m happy that this one worked out for you.

Not trying to cast shade, and I tend to agree that wine is more resilient than many of us think. But you gotta love these experiments with an N= 1 and no controls.

I totally agree, J. While the bottle sounded drinkable, the references to caramel indicated to me that it probably wasn’t quite as fresh as a bottle that was stored under ideal conditions would be. I believe that the threat of heat damage exists all along the pipeline, and for anyone who wants to age wine, the best thing to do is know your sources and keep the wine as well stored as you can throughout its life.

I think the only conclusion we can draw is that Brig likes heat-damaged wine.