Leaky Bottles.......

Sorry if this has already been answered. I have observed many leaky bottles of Riesling when purchased at retail. In one instance I returned a 750ml twice before getting a sound bottle. Do they over-fill these bottles? Is this a common problem; or is it just me?

Great question. The answer is yes, many bottles are overfilled, with these young wines that are full of CO2 at bottling. Even the slightest temperature change causes the volume to expand, and then you get leakers, and people think the wine’s been abused. But maybe it’s only been offloaded from a 56º container into a 68º warehouse.

Ive had really good luck with Riesling leakers.

The fills certainly have a lot to do with it. About a year ago as part of a cellar reorganization Ichecked each and every bottle of German wine (well all wine) in my cellar, and there were a number of leakers (more than 20), but no pattern at all. Bottles from the same case would be either clean with spinning capsules (whatever that means), completely obvious leakers or somewhere in between. Some leakers had zero - yes zero - air bubbles in the bottle, so you know that was an overfill.

I put all the leakers in a cople of easily accessible cases, and have been working my way through them. All of them have been delicious with only 1 of the more than 10 I have opened so far showing any signs of being remotely advanced, and that was in a very pleasing, normal way - just a touch older than one might have expected based on similar bottles.

I will not say that I don’t worry about leakers, but there is something about German wine (not just Riesling) and leakage - it happens, but it doesn’t seem to matter much.

Good to know information. Thanks