Water in Bottled Wine

[Adair]

Hello All,

I was hoping I could get some opinions from those more knowledgeable on this subject, both for my understanding and to put my mind to rest.

Earlier this year I returned a bottle of 2003 Tyrrell's Vat 9. I was not sure whether it was TCA affected but it was not right.

I promptly received a call from Tyrrell's saying that they did not need to check the wine for TCA as they were able to conclude from simply checking the alcohol content of the remaining contents of my bottle that dilution was the cause of my discontent. The alcohol of my wine was 13.28%, while the wine should be 13.52% or 13.56% (I have forgotten which one). By my calculations, this means that my wine contained 1.78% or 2.06% water.

Apparently at the end of the bottling run there is still wine in the hoses, so instead of losing this wine, water is then pumped through the hoses to push out the last bits of wine. Tyrrell's maintained that everyone does this but TyrrellÂ’s takes much more care than others as they monitor how much water makes it into the final bottles and when the level gets up to 2% dilution (98% wine), they stop bottling and throw out the rest of the wine still within the hoses. TyrrellÂ’s believes that up to 2% dilution is not detectable by the vast majority. Additionally, they said that other wineries continue with the dilution past this point, especially as they do not have systems to monitor the water dilution at the end of bottling runs.

Anyway, every time I buy a case of wine to lay down for the medium/long-term, I think about whether the bottles are from the ends of bottling runs, especially wines from TyrrellÂ’s. For example, I recently bought a case of 2004 Vat 1 for long-term cellaring and am thinking of opening a bottle now just to make sure that I canÂ’t notice any dilution.

Can anyone confirm or deny that this practice is widespread and acceptable? Or any other thoughts on this subject would be most appreciated.

Kind regards,
Adair

[Guest]

How much wine wastage would result from a 0% dilution? If it's anything less than %1, then this practice just has to stop or at least the bottles be labelled 'end of bottling run' and sold for a little less. For that matter, I think it's illegal to add water to wine, no? How about selling petrol with...oh, never mind

[vinum-unlogged]

Yes, this is a industry standard (there are however other means, which have add implications), and there are numerous ways to control dilution. I would say that you have unluckily come across an exception rather than the rule.

Cheers
Colin.