No A/C = Wine Rescue

What a day, spent 4-5 hrs at work today, drove home to find my A/C was on the fritz. I made a few phone calls and found someone to come out and take a look. 5 PM still waiting and 86 degrees, maybe I should call around and find a place to store my excess wine. In the interim, the repairman shows up, troubleshoots the unit…bad news, compressor is dead. Now I know I need a wine rescue. I have two 183 bottle wine refrigerators that are full and about 15 cases around the house. My partner in wine tasting arrives at 8pm and we load up her car and mine and get the wine to safety. Ok, I picked up one of my 3L Meritage bottles and it had a wet neck…small amount of wine leaked out. Any suggestions on whether or not I should drink this one in the near future and if it could have been damaged by exposure to 8-9 hrs of 80-86 degree heat? Good news is this event persuaded me to go ahead and purchase a le cache.

Sorry to hear that. If I were you, I would find an excuse to open that 3L some time this year.

I concur with Ken. That’s more than enough time for heat to damage the wine.

the 3L was not in one of the fridges, correct?

Exposing the large bottle to 8-9 hours of 80-86 degree heat is not the same as the wine being at 80-86 degrees for 8-9 hours. It would take a lot longer for that mass of wine to reach that temp if the wine were cold to begin with. The leakage would bother me but I will go against prevailing wisdom and tell you not to worry. Also, if it is a young Meritage and mostly Cab, it should be more resistant to heat than an older wine, Pinot, or Champagne.
alan

I will be tremendously surprised if 8-9 hours of 80 F has rendered the wine undrinkable. Also, as noted if the wine was cold to begin with, you can shorten the period to maybe 4-5 hours and the problem become even smaller

Nobody is saying the wine is undrinkable, but if it is leaking, it is because the seal was broken. The concern is not heat damage, but rather that oxygen has been introduced and the seal broken, so oxygen will potentially continue to be introduced. Thus the wine won’t age as well as it might have otherwise. Depending on the wine and vintage, I would not be in a rush to drink it, but I would not hold it for 20 years either.

For me, leak equals drink.

Ken, I was responding to what i understood to be an inherent question of whether the bottle of wine (and the remaining bottles in the house) had been severely impacted the exposure to the temperature range mentioned by OP, in the course of 8-9 hours. I have limited experience with leaking wine, but i would also put it on my drink soon list, for that reason alone. Sorry for the confusion

My money would be on the 3 liter having a bad cork to begin with. They are notorious leakers. Are you sure it was okay before your AC problem? Doesn’t really matter what caused it though – drink leakers.

Your wines in the fridge were probably still cool to the touch if you had left the doors closed. Especially for just a 9 hour period. Just b/c it’s 86 in your house doesn’t mean the wine, even those just sitting on a kitchen counter, are 86 degrees. Physics and all that.

You should probably open that 3L ASAP & I have an empty glass!

I like what Randy said…that the 3L had a bad cork to begin with, it’s a 2006 CSM Artist series Metitage. I will have to open it up in the next 2 weeks and see. I had a bottle of wine in my kitchen with a wine preserver on it, the temp reading was 86.9. We drank it last night and it wasn’t cooked, just not a very good wine…2009 Novelty Hill. I’m more worried right now about the cases of wine I had in cases vs the 3L bottles. I went through them this morning and had forgot about what all was in them. All of my 2010 Burgundy and CDP purchases from this year were in the cases as well as quite a bit of Cali cabs and PN.

Rick I wouldn’t worry too much. Wine is a lot tougher than we give it credit for.

Rick, glad to hear you found a place to rescue your wine, sorry it wasn’t with me! Unlike some others, I think this concept of thermal mass, meaning it didn’t get up to ambient room temperature, so ‘don’t worry’ is wrong. While it clearly didn’t get the bottle up to the absolute maximum ambient temp (there’s some lag, obviously), it came pretty damn close. However, I don’t think (with the exception of your leaker) that your other bottles were compromised in that short of a period of time. But once it leaked, drink up.

For those of you that think a bottle doesn’t get warm that quickly, think about dinner al fresco, you pull a bottle from the fridge and take it outside. Within 10 minutes, is warmer than you like, and within an hour, trust me, it’s ambient temp. A 3L won’t take that much longer.

Chuck, i think from my perspective the point is that even if the wines were at 80F for 9 hours i would not worry too much about them beeing cooked. Maybe they theoretically will age slightly faster if exposed to heat of that nature for short periods of time, but opinions vary and not many hard facts are available. so if it was 7 hours or 9 hours is IMHO irrrelevant.

I completely understand the nervousness though, i fuss about these things as well but tend to try to calm myself down. I recently had a bottle of Pegau which were stored in my wine fridge for the time i stored it, but it was horribly cooked anyway, reminding me that things also happen to the bottles before they reach my house.

I think you are far too concerned about these wines reaching 85 for a few hours. That temp isn’t going to cook the wine. Because of storage issues, I keep my daily drinkers in an upstairs bedroom that gets up to 80 routinely in the summer months. In fact, I open and close windows in this room in the spring/fall and these bottles endure ambient temperature swings of at least five-ten degrees, daily. I’ve had bottles stored like this for up to three years now. Not a single bottle has leaked and they are drinking just fine.

What appears clear is that this elevated temperature will increase their aging rate beyond what I’d accept for wines I plan to hold for much longer (all these bottles I keep in ‘proper’ storage). But again, this is over the longterm. A few hours at this elevated temperature is likely to simply do what it did - identify the poorly sealed bottles that wouldn’t have held up in the longterm anyway.

Great input everyone, many thanks! The total carnage was 1ea leaking 3L and 1ea leaking magnum of 2010 Dutton Goldfield Chard which is being enjoyed right now. I just opened a bottle of 2010 Seasmoke Southing and it tastes Great. My biggest concern was more for the Burgundies and some CDP I picked up this year.

Cheers!

How hot was the house to have leaking bottles? The heat damage will not be obvious when young.