Old Cabernet turns colourless?!
2A friend of mine posted a photo of a bottle of 1978 Gallo Cabernet he just received. It was colourless throughout, but with a ton of red sediment at the bottom. Appears that the cork and capsule are intact. He’s asking what we think about it. The wine is https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=704664
Any thoughts? Is this likely to be “interesting” or more likely to be vinegar? @rpm @TerceroWines @ScottHarveyWine and where’s Peter when you need him?
- 5 comments, 5 replies
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My guess is it is way over the hill. I wouldn’t spend to much money on it. Only enough for curiosity. If the wine had a lot of Alicante Bouchet in the blend, which this vintage could of had up to 49%, Alicante always precipitates its color out.
@ScottHarveyWine
Thanks Scott,
Any idea why, and is the only grape you know of that tends to do that?
Alicante runs red juice. The rest of the red varieties get their color from the skins. The color in the Alicante has always been known to precipitate out over time. Why, I don’t know. My guess is the color in regular red wine comes out of the skins bound with tannin and the tannin must have something to do with keeping the color in solution.
I have seen this happen from time to time and yes, the wine is adversely affected because of it. I truly don’t understand why it happens to some bottles and not others - it may have to do with provenance once purchased or, if the wines are unfiltered, some bacterial action in bottle . . .
@tercerowines Thanks Larry! I should have tagged you in the FB post as well. I think I’ll go do that now!
It’s dead, Klez. The first time I saw the phenomenon was in the late 1950s, with several pre-Prohibition bottles. If you will recall you visits to my cousin Bill Harrison’s winery, he has an Italian Swiss Colony ‘Chianti’ and a California Wine Association Cabernet dating from about 1910 which have been clear with sediment as long as I can remember.
@rpm Yeah, I figured it wouldn’t be a tasty beverage any longer. But if there are no redeeming qualities (even by virtue of being educational) then the closed bottle will remain a fun conversation piece!
@klezman Yep, a conversation piece is about the best you can do. Gallo’s Cab in those days was drinkable, and a decent value, but they had trouble selling it at a fair price for the wine because of their more general reputation as a low end producer. It was only a few years later they started buying up smaller wineries and keeping the labels alive…
There is no harm in opening it and trying a ‘sniffy sniff’. I tried an old Barolo with my good friend, it was around 30 years old and just as you described, almost colorless and a lot of sediment as though all of the color fell out of the wine and was lying in the bottom of the bottle. It tasted incredible, just what you would expect from an old well made Barolo. The cognitive dissonance was strong while drinking this odd wine. We even made a cell phone video because it was so strange. So give it a shot, it’s probably dead but you never know!
you don’t!