Need Advice on Frozen Wines

[Chuck]

Had a few friends over last night for a BBQ and with the heat was strugging to keep the wines at appropriate temperature. So stuffed a couple of whites in the freezer to chill down but with numerous wines already consumed forgot about them until this morning. The one under stelvin had spat its cap off and the one under cork had pushed the cork virtually out of the neck. Both wines were completely frozen with the bottles still standing up.

Any advice on whether they will be OK and whether they can be resealed and put back in the cellar?

Chuck

[TiggerK]

I doubt they will be OK, the ice crystals then turned back into wine will likely have ruined it. Others might have some real world experience, but judging by what I've seen it do to beer, I suspect it'll be a similar story.

Cheers
TiggerK

Edit: Although thinking about it, beer is obviously fizzy, unlike still wine, so perhaps that'll mean wine behaves a bit differently? Only one way to find out....

[monghead]

Resealed and back to the cellar- a definite no.
But I think if you thaw it out today and drink it today, it should be fine...

Anyways, let us know.

[Chuck]

OK so the test was on. The first bottle was a Watershed Margaret River 2009 SSB under stelvin and we just happened to have another bottle opened on Friday night for a direct comparison. Tasted side by side the previously frozen wine was in fact slightly fresher and overall a marginally better wine. This could be put down to the extra day of oxidation of the Friday wine particularly since there was just a glass left.

The 2nd bottle was an Ashton Hills 1998 Chardonnay. The guest who brought it thought it may be a bit of a lucky dip as his storage conditions are not the best. JH had its best drinking as 2006. Whilst a little tired it was a good wine with some lovely aged charateristics and showing no apparent ill effects from the freezing. A little too much oak.

So there you have it. At face value based on a very limited sample freezing a wine does not seem to materially affect its quality even when the stelvin and cork are spat off during the freezing process. Maybe this could be useful if you need to take a bottle of white to an outdoor function during summer without an adequate cooling system. Just remember to take a bit out to allow for expansion during freezing.

With only a glass taken the bottles were filled with an inert wine gas and we'll have another taste over the next couple of night....strictly for science of course.

For the record the other wines on the night were:

Janz bubbles. NV?
Grant Burge NV bubbles. Always a crowd favourite here.
2008 Mesh Riesling. Yum
Penfolds 1998 Bin 28 Kalimna. Very pleasant without being great. Old fashion shiraz.
Houghtons 2001 Margaret River Cabernet. Last bottle and drinking perfectly. Great example of MR cabernet.
Thorn-Clarke 2007 Quartage. These guys box well above their weight. Supposedly a bad vintage but it was really nice.
Courvoisier VSOP. Very pleasant juice and geat with the plunger coffee about 1.00am.

Feeling a little shabby today. On a hot Adelaide night it paid to chill the reds down a bit.

Chuck

[BigBob]

The only potential changes if the wines were still sealed are that the pH and acidity may change due to tartrate crystals precipitating out - a minor change at best as the wines would have been subjected to below zero temperatures in the winery to stabilise for this anyway, just leaving what is unstable between that temp and whatever temp they got down to in your freezer to precipitate out.

A bigger problem is when the seal is broken (which it looks like it certainly was), at such low temps, oxygen pickup will be accelerated, leading to advanced oxidation as the wine warms up. So they would definitely be a no go for resealing and putting away - not that you did anyway!

[morph_associates]

Ouchies.
I had some monkey (clearly a newbie) turn the dessert wine fridge down so low that it froze a bottle closest to the chiller components, also forcing the cork up (including some liquid out)!

Mega-fail.

The wine is never the same again for sure. Probably was still moderately ok to drink on the night, but unless you had other bottles side-by-side of the exact same vintage and bottling batch, you'd never really know...

[Chuck]

Day 2 and both wines were no worse off than an equivalent bottle bottle left in the fridge. Remember one was a tired '98 chardy. The SSB was still OK and again no different than expected from a standard bottle.

Day 3 and the chardy was vey tired but no worse than you would expect from an equivalent unfrozen bottle. The SSB was just fine. Fruit was still virbrant with good acid.

Only variable was the inert gas to minimse oxygen contact that may have been a plus. Overall I reckon freezing a white is OK. Others may differ but I don't have a decerning palate.

Chuck

[daz]

I've heard of but never tried Icewine.

[Mahmoud Ali]

Many years ago a wine critic wrote about how he had so many bottles to review and critique that he had difficulty finishing the bottles before they went off. Instead of pouring them down the drain he started putting the partially consumed bottles in a freezer. Later, when he had the time he would thaw the wine and drink them.

He was of the opinion that there was very little difference between the wine he reviewed when it was first opened and the wine that was frozen and thawed. It was interesting but not something I ever put into practice. Besides, my open bottles rarely last more than a few days.

Cheers...........................Mahmoud.

[Decca]

I've been freezing wines (mostly young quaffers) for about 5 years now. My freezer only works to about -4C and I'm able to store opened bottles without them quite freezing. The occasional one will actually solidify, which is only a problem in that it won't initially pour.
So I have the option of leaving wine for 2-3 weeks.

Tastewise, I've not really found any difference between semi-freezing and regular fridge chilling and a fairly minimal difference between that and first opened. Of course it always depends on the wine. I never expect an 8-10 yr, or in fact, any fully mature wine, to show well the next day, regardless of how it's been kept overnight.

Of course if my freezer actually worked at -18C as it should, I wouldn't do the above quite as much as it would require a fair lead time for thawing.