Bottle Variation

Like many on the board, in 2020 I bought a whole lot of private label wines from DeNegoce and Wine Access. In tasting the wines, I’ve found a huge amount of variation - for example we would try a bottle and absolutely adore it, and then open another bottle (sometimes in the same night, but more frequently days/weeks later) and not care for it. It seems (anecdotally) that many others on the board have experienced this phenomenon as well, but scientifically it doesn’t make much sense that wines being poured from the same place taste different from bottle to bottle. Additionally, Cam Hughes himself has said that bottle variation is not real:

I’m curious what everyone seems to think about the existence of bottle variation in recent vintage wines. Going solely from taste, I swear bottle variation is real, but the facts seem to suggest otherwise. Thoughts?

I have only experienced this with older bottles, even when purchased from the same place. They can be radically different wines. I haven’t experienced this with recent releases, and there are wines I have drank dozens and dozens of times (mostly whtes: our household consumption of reds is more varied).

I’ve bought very few full cases to compare to, but those few have been consistent.

I’ve had spoiled/corked wines that I returned to a retailer for an exact exchange and the replacment bottle was fine each time. I’d assume they got their lots from the same bottling so for spoilage it’s obviously possible.

Only other data points I can think of is a couple CdP that I’ve had with some bottle age (but not by me) in different settings (once with family, another at a restaurant, another I purchased a single of), so the handling of the individual bottles were obviously different. For those I noticed a difference, but were years apart; tough to pin down to bottle variation. Could have just been a few degrees storage temp difference or what our particular meal was each time.

I’ve experienced numerous “bottle variations” in young and old wines, still and sparkling. The obvious question is why? And the possible reasons are numerous including the wine itself, effects of winemaking and other producer related influences, to shipping exposures, to storage and to food pairing, to our palate perceptions which can change often and on.

An example of winemaker influence: My friend, the late Burt Williams of Williams Selyem fame, attempted to fill every bottler of his Pinots to the cork, but as his daughters have testified, at the end of the day, they might have gotten a bit sloppy and not got the fill right. I recall some of the same wines having significant ullage differences upon release and always drank the lesser fill first. That has been much more important when buying his wines made in the 90s or earlier. I always check the fill before bidding/ buying. If it’s mid neck, it’s a go, but some recently were low shoulder and I passed.

I’ve had a few bottles of younger vintage champagne that are so different from others with the same specs as to disgorgement and dosage and in time have come together and at some point come close to if not attain the same characteristics.

I’m sure I’m showing my ignorance here but I’ve always wondered why there isn’t meaningful bottle variation at every large estate. Especially for some of the giant Bordeaux names making massive amounts of wine. Obviously they aren’t really blending one giant “batch” of wine in one big container that ultimately gets dispensed uniformly into bottles. Ultimately they are really making dozens of smaller batches of wine and while they try to measure precisely and blend them the same I’m sure, there is just no way each of those blending attempts ultimately has the exact same composition of original plots and process. Right? Am I Missing something? It just seems impossible that all the bottles were ever uniform to begin with.

I’ve been slightly bemused to see people opening all these private label wines that are just extremely young and then complaining about bottle variation. While some wines will show well very young, many will not. Even those that do show well while young are often in a youthful drinking window and you can expect that to close up. While you will often find variation in older wines, and while what constitutes old vs. young depends greatly on the type of wine, I think that overall you’ll find these wines are significantly more consistent after some time in bottle. Of course, they may never taste quite the same as the early “good” bottles did, as they’ll likely trade some of that youthful freshness for greater complexity.

While I understand the wines are young, bottle shock does not last 8+ months and doesn’t explain the phenomenon being reported. If the post was complaining about the wines being unenjoyable I’d agree.

I think it’s a bit ‘defensive’ for Cam to state that bottle variation is not a real phenomenon - it happens for both young and old bottles. I agree with him that we the factors in which we consume a bottle from one day to the next are impossible to recreate - everything about our surroundings and ourselves will be ‘different’ (ex - barometric pressure, ambient temperature, our internal temperature, what we ate, etc). And the mood and setting in which you consume a wine will have a HUGE effect on how the wine is perceived - I am convinced of that.

All of that said, this does not explain away the reality that bottles can show ‘differently’ from each other for many factors, especially the closures used. There is no such thing as a ‘perfect’ closure and each is meant to allow for some oxidative reactions to take place. Natural cork is incredibly variable with regards to this factor, and other closures are also to a lesser extent.

I am assuming that Cam’s runs are small enough where the bottling is coming out of one tank, but if that is not the case, you are bound to get some ‘bottle variation’ just due to the fact that more than one tank was uses. And even if it is out of one tank, bottling can take some time - and free SO2 levels might be affected by this from the beginning of the run to the end, based on a number of factors including temperature and pH of the wine.

Hope that helps - and waiting to hear from other winemakers about this as well . . .

Cheers.

+1. I get a good chuckle. Hey like they say if it floats your boat. Go for it. I have purchased a few and have had two bottles of the 2017 Merlot N.04. No bottle variation with those two. In fact both were very good and will only get better over the next 1-3 years.

Plus 1

I taste the same fermenters, the same lots, and the same wines from bottles over and over and over again.

The molecules in barrel 1 may be very similar to the molecules in barrel 2 but they are not the same. Putting them in the same tank and doing whatever you want to try in order to make them homogenous will not result in an even distribution of molecules from barrel 1 and barrel 2. It isn’t different if the blend is 20,000 barrels.

Add in different vineyard sources in blends and even the most thoroughly mixed tank will still show variations bottle to bottle.

That does not in anyway discount what Cameron said about our own perceptions being very subject to change as well.

Hard as we try Groundhog Day was just a movie. A great movie though…

Some good and reasonable responses above, but regarding blending and bottling nuances, couldn’t you expect to experience uniformity for a case of wine where the bottles probably came off of the line one after another (assuming consumption within a relatively short period of time)? I don’t know if I would be able to pick up slight differences, but when the variation is major it really bugs me. I quit buying Rhys because of the major (IMHO) bottle variation that I experienced. Cheers!

Your premise is sound for that one particular issue - it would be highly unlikely that the ‘blend’ or ‘tank’ used from one bottle in a single case and another in that same case would be different. But all of the other issues I mentioned above certainly can lead to bottle variation - with one of the main issues being the variability of natural cork and products made with natural cork.

Cheers.

DRC, famously bottles each barrel separately, without blending the wine before.

I am not sure but there was a wine critic that actually complained.

That’s the thing though; I am not talking about “bottle shock.” I’m saying that young wines change rapidly then settle into a more consistent evolution. Framing the discussion as being about bottle shock is very misleading IMO. I’m not accusing you of that, btw, I have seen on these threads how this variation gets attributed to bottle shock and I don’t think that is the case at all. I just think very young wines are highly variable from bottle to bottle, with the caveat once again that it really depends on the wine in question too.

You’re right that, typically, there are different lots of big Bordeaux chateaux, but I don’t think there are dozens of them. They blend many barrels into large tanks, and can pump back and forth between large tanks if they really want consistency.

(There may be more lot numbers than blends, however. Under EU rules, i believe they have to assign different lot numbers for each bottling day if the same batch/tank is bottled over several days. This came up with the normale bottling from the Produttori di Barbaresco in 2006. Ultimately, there were three blends but many more lot numbers because they couldn’t bottle all of one batch on a single day.)

+1

And what Cameron and Larry said about the context is very true. We know that wine tastes different in a plane at 30,000 feet, so it shouldn’t be surprising if it tastes different depending on barometric pressure on earth. Not to mention what food is being served and the ambient temperature.

FYI, I was in Barolo in late August 2016 and everyone was bottling that week. Partly, that was because some grapes would be picked soon and they needed the cellar space. But it was also because it was a full moon that week, and they believe that’s the best time to bottle.

Some of the de Negoce offerings are consistent, though young, across the bottles we’ve had. Others are wildly inconsistent within an offering. Good bottles to highly acidic bottles to just “off” bottles.
Having worked on a bottling line, I can tell you there is variation even within the same tank. The wine changes from top to the bottom on occasion.

This is great insight, thanks for sharing! I have had a very similar experience with the DN wines, but also with the Wine Access offerings as well.

Well said, Blake.

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Something not yet raised in this thread, which I think is responsible for a far larger share of observed bottle variation than is generally thought, is just how varied microbial activity can be post-bottling (there is of course pre-bottling variation, too, given the earlier comments in this thread about variation within lots of a single wine that may or may not be fully blended together pre-bottling).

Bottle 1 is “normal”
Bottle 2 feels a lot more expressive, perfumed, bright
Bottle 3 feels tight, not giving up much. Maybe it’s going through a dumb phase?
Bottle 4 is more savory, earthy, meaty, less fruity

Bottle 2 has higher VA due to acetic acid bacterial activity in bottle
Bottle 3 has a tiny amount of cork taint
Bottle 4 has a little brett

These are just three of the most common taints of microbial origin that occur in bottle. Two bottles of a different wine can have somewhat different microbial populations depending on where in the tank the wine came from, or chance, or variations in response to Velcorin dosing, or low but present and different populations of microbes in the empty bottles, bottling line, corks, etc. And two bottles of the same wine can have fairly similar starting microbial demographics, if you will, and evolve to very different places pretty quickly depending on temperature, oxygen ingress into the bottle, available substrates in the wine and cork, etc. There are complex and real sensory effects of sub-threshold levels of microbial spoilage compounds, and the variety of species of yeast and bacteria that can produce sensory differences - with differing effects depending on the available precursors in the wine - is truly mind-boggling. We don’t have the luxury of being able to do microbiological and chemical analysis on every wine we drink, but if we did, I think we would be surprised by the amount of bottle variation that has a microbial explanation.

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