The Bouncing Bottle
by Stephen Reiss, Ph.D., C.W.E

Originally Published in the August 1990 edition The Wine Investors Buying Guide

Vintners and winery representatives travel great distances to attend wine tasting around the country. By the time they arrive they are often exhausted and must rest to be their best. But what about their wines? Do they suffer from as much or more fatigue as their human counterparts? Is it possible that the wine at these tastings are not showing their best because of this travel fatigue?

I recently held a tasting, unofficially in conjunction with the Aspen Food and Wine Classic, to learn about bottle fatigue. The names of the wines and participating wineries have been omitted, mostly because it is irrelevant, and partly to keep any stigma from being attached to their wines.

The control wines were sent to me two months before the tasting, and were stored under perfect conditions is a self contained cellar. In order to reduce the effects of bottle variation on the test, two bottles of rested wine were tasted for each bottle of traveled wine. The wines to be tested for fatigue were taken from the wines to be poured for the tasting. These wines had been shipped from California, arriving the day before the tasting. All the wines had been shipped and stored in temperature controlled environments, so temperature is not a factor in this test.

The three grape varieties tasted were Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Pinot Noir. All the wines were placed in paper bags and randomly numbered.

The Zinfandel was the least obviously effected by travel, with only 50% of the participants picking it out. The fatigued bottled showed slightly less fruit on the nose than the other bottles; however had the participants not known the intent of the tasting, the fatigued bottle would have been considered a bottle variation.

The Cabernet Sauvignon was more noticeably fatigued, with 75% of the tasters correctly identifying the test bottle. The tannins and alcohol were out of balance in that they stood out. In the rested bottles the tannins and alcohol were much less obvious. An apt analogy would be a bottle of water with sand in it. At rest the sand has settled on the bottom and has a smooth surface; disturb the bottle and the sand swirls about, becoming more apparent.