[question] Question submitted by David Braham, Australia. I recently purchased three bottles of Grange Hermitage from an auction at what I thought were excellent prices. However I failed to ask or check how they had been cellared in the past or where they had been kept. Is there any way of telling what condition an old wine is in just from looking at the bottle, how it has been cellared or whether there is a way of knowing if it is still drinkable by the way it looks? [/question] [answer] The responsible auction houses will list on their catalogues the levels of wines that are not at close to their original fill level. A smaller percentage of auction houses are actually reliable as far as this kind of information is concerned. Sadly, however, the level in the bottle does not reveal all. I always check the condition of the wine in the bottle by holding it up to as bright a light as I am able to. Cloudiness or unexpected levels of deposit, or obvious browining or diminution of colour intensity are all to be avoided. But again, appearance does not tell all. Plenty of wines have been stored badly for a short time, ie near external windows or doors, and as a result have suffered extreme changes of temperature from day to night. It doesn’t take long for this to wreck or flatten a wine, and frankly I see this sort of thing from bottles bought at auction all the time. So, frankly, there is no way to determine whether or not a wine has been cellared well or still drinkable without actually opening it and finding out. This is perhaps an argument in favour of sourcing older wines from cellars that are well controlled and managed, ie from the commercial cellarage operations that are more likely to have an idea of the provenance of the actual bottle. [/answer]
