Freeze wine results

OK--my results are in.

The wine:

Condesa de Loganza, 2002 Crianza, LaMancha, 100% temp. 12 months American Oak.

The method:

Opened one bottle, poured some to taste and split the rest into three separate containers to freeze.

Froze them for eight days.

After eight days, set out to defrost the wines. One container defrosted in a convection oven for one hour, and one container left to stand on the counter to defrost for one hour. After an hour, however much had defrosted was poured into a glass in quite a cold state. Then, the third container was defrosted in the microwave for four minutes.

Each defrosted wine was poured into separate glasses. Then, a fresh bottle was open and wine from it was also poured into a glass. All four glasses were left to stand on the counter to reach room temperature...about 45 minutes.

Sensory results:

The four glasses were placed in front of me and I had no indication which was which. I had the notes from the original tasting of the first fresh bottle to compare with the four glasses in front of me.

These are the notes of the first bottle.

CLARITY: Deep red and luminous

NOSE: Whiff of lush, dark fruit and cedar

TASTE: Black cherry, some acidity, strong bitter tannins, wood on the edges. Integrated with a nice middle.

These are the notes of the four glasses.

CLARITY: 3 glasses, Deep red and hazy; 1 glass, Deep red and luminous

NOSE: 3 glasses, mild to almost none; 1 glass, lush fruit. (It turned out that the counter defrost had the least noticeable nose, the convection defrost had the most noticeable nose, but none of the three had as noticeable a nose as the fourth glass.)

TASTE: 3 glasses, low acid, mild tannin bitterness, pronounced wood, weak middle; 1 glass, dark cherry, bitter tannins, cedar wood, a nice middle.

Overall impression:

The frozen wines certainly dropped in acidity (fair amount of tartrates), but they also dropped fruit intensity. They lacked a middle structure which neither fresh bottle lacked, and they certainly were hazy.

The three frozen wines did not differ much, if at all, among the separate defrosting methods.

While the frozen wines were drinkable and not off; they were softer (but not better) and they certainly were not the same as the fresh bottle.

What did I take away from the experiment? Freezing does not necessarily ruin the wine (which I already knew) but it certainly changes it.

Thank you so much Thomas for conducting this experiment in such a scientific manner. Interesting results! It sounds like this method would work fine for my daily drinking wine, but I would certainly not open a nice bottle unless I intended to finish it. Thanks again for all your efforts.

I am disappointed in that there's no "Wine Pop" tasting note!!

I'm surprised no one caught my typo and asked me if poring the wines was messy...

Thomas, I admit that the only way I have thawed frozen wine is to have simply set them on the counter still vacu-vined. No nuking, no hot water etc. I also completely thawed the wine and let it come to drinking temp. I have always done this with a thawed wine. IMO, it is simply the best way to keep a wine for weeks rather than days.

I did this a few times when I was single. The frozen "baggies" of wine would throw large amounts of sediment.

Best,
Joe

Thomas, I admit that the only way I have thawed frozen wine is to have simply set them on the counter still vacu-vined. No nuking, no hot water etc. I also completely thawed the wine and let it come to drinking temp. I have always done this with a thawed wine. IMO, it is simply the best way to keep a wine for weeks rather than days.

Bob,

I don't doubt that freezing is the better way to keep wine for long periods of time. But in the end, I don't think you have the same wine that you started out with, and that, to me, is the more important point.

(Incidentally, I wouldn't even bother with the vacu-vin--just put the wine in the freezer. I have absolutely no faith in that "vacuous" pump, and had much experience with it to have come to that conclusion.)

If someone like that retailer thinks that wine is invariably "better" after having been frozen, which his attitude seems to imply, I'd say he has no idea what he is talking about and that in the first place he ought to stay away from wines that have any acidity to them, which seems to be mainly what suffers in the freezing process--that and the middle palate.

I'm going to do another experiment with a different wine to see if I can replicate the results.

Bob,
I don't doubt that freezing is the better way to keep wine for long periods of time. But in the end, I don't think you have the same wine that you started out with, and that, to me, is the more important point.

(Incidentally, I wouldn't even bother with the vacu-vin--just put the wine in the freezer. I have absolutely no faith in that "vacuous" pump, and had much experience with it to have come to that conclusion.) Truncated.

Thomas, I agree that freezing wine for the short term is not the way to go. I also agree with you (to a point) about the vacu-vin. When I freeze wine it is for those times when I, for one reason or another know that it will be at least a week before I will get back to it. I have had better results with wines I have frozen than those you reported, but that could just be my poor excuse for a palate. As regards the vacu-vin pumping, I do it because in all likelihood I will be laying the wine down in the freezer, and I have experienced much less leakage with the rubber stopper than with inverting and reinserting the cork. I suspect that while we are not in complete agreement, we are also not that far apart.

I think that freezing wine does keep it from oxidizing, but I did this once with a Madiran when I unexpectedly caught a cold just a day after trying the wine, and didn't want the rest of the wine to go bad over the week or more that I would be out of olfactory/gustatory commission (and I don't believe in vacu-vin type devices). When I thawed the wine, a huge deposit of tartrate had formed at the bottom and taken much colour pigment with it. The wine was, correctly speaking, not oxidized - but it tasted as if it had been put through a wringer ... its structure was off, and its soul was gone.

I've frozen wine to save for cooking, but nver for drinking.

I think that freezing wine does keep it from oxidizing, but I did this once with a Madiran when I unexpectedly caught a cold just a day after trying the wine, and didn't want the rest of the wine to go bad over the week or more that I would be out of olfactory/gustatory commission (and I don't believe in vacu-vin type devices). When I thawed the wine, a huge deposit of tartrate had formed at the bottom and taken much colour pigment with it. The wine was, correctly speaking, not oxidized - but it tasted as if it had been put through a wringer ... its structure was off, and its soul was gone.

Yep. That middle palate is like a soul.

Thanks for the notes, Thomas. Well done study. I'd say on average my experience has been slightly more positive, but of course I "expect" it to work.

Expectations clearly drive results -- and as long as I'm happy with them, so what?

The wine has never been drinkable before freezing and undrinkable after doing so.

Thanks for the notes, Thomas. Well done study. I'd say on average my experience has been slightly more positive, but of course I "expect" it to work.

Expectations clearly drive results -- and as long as I'm happy with them, so what?

The wine has never been drinkable before freezing and undrinkable after doing so.

Bob,

I did it blind to remove bias. What I wrote down is what I saw, smelled and tasted...one glass at a time, in random, blind order, served to me by another person.

Thomas, the Wall Street Journal had a riff on this subject this weekend:

Harvey Steiman, in "Wine Spectator's Essentials of Wine," recommends freezing leftover wine. "Wine does lose something when frozen and thawed, mainly tannin and acidity," he writes, "but the flavors remain 95% intact." If he's right about losing tannin and acidity, we can understand how this might have the same effect as age in some cases, though it's not something we'd recommend as regular practice. So we contacted Harvey -- we've known him since we all worked at the Miami Herald in a previous millennium -- and asked him about this interesting question. He responded: "Like you, I would never recommend freezing wine to age it, but I do freeze already opened, half-full bottles that I can't drink within a day or two. Some acidity drops out of suspension in the process (visible as tartrate crystals) and some phenols as well, including tannins and some flavor (but the loss of flavor is much less than in a bottle left at room temperature or fridge for a couple of days). The result certainly can mimic the effects of aging. Also, it's possible that your bottle lost some unwanted flavors in the process, making it seem better."

Also, it's possible that your bottle lost some unwanted flavors in the process, making it seem better."[/i]

Thanks, Bob. Of course, that last sentence strikes me as absurd, but what do I know??? I am not much of a fan of subjective measurements.

(and I don't believe in vacu-vin type devices). When I thawed the wine, a huge deposit of tartrate had formed at the bottom and taken much colour pigment with it. The wine was, correctly speaking, not oxidized - but it tasted as if it had been put through a wringer ... its structure was off, and its soul was gone.

Paul the question then that I would ask is "would the wine have been better (for you) if you had just put it on the counter or in the fridge and left it until you were able to drink it, or do you think it would have lost it's soul sitting there too. About those crystals, they form because the wine was not cold stabilized, and so I would have expected it to have been softer than before freezing. I am not so sure that freezing wine will cause any loss of tannin , in fact I can not see any reason that would happen. I can see how the wine might have been lighter in color as the tartrate crystals will absorb some color. To my way of thinking it is better to freeze the wine and have a (IMO) marginally lesser wine when thawed, than to pour the wine down the drain. As to thew vacu-vin stopper, see my response to Thomas where I explain that the rubber stopper is better than the inverted cork reinserted. I lay the bottle down in the freezer and with the rubber stopper (pumped) they do not leak, and with the cork they are subject to.