The immense awesomeness of giant bottles of Tom Eddy Cab
It’s January and it’s bottling time. As we set out to bottle the 2007 Tom Eddy Cabernets (yes, there’s more than one), an enormous number of decisions need to be made.
Of course, we will bottle the Cabernet in the standard 750ml (@26oz.) wine bottle which everyone is used to buying at the store, opening at home and drinking the recommended 3 glasses per night…no more, no less. Right?
But we will also be bottling these wines into much larger bottles or large formats. One of these key decisions is how many Large Format bottles do we want to bottle?
Shawn of Iowa with a 3L Tom Eddy Cab.
Large Format bottles come in many different sizes: Magnums (1.5Liters or 2 regular bottles); Double Magnums (3L); Imperial (6L), Salmanazar (9L) and Balthazar (12L). You can do the math.
Plus, we will be bottling several different vineyards: the 2007 Tom Eddy Cabernet; 2007 Spanos Single Vineyard Cabernet; and 2007 VSR (Very Special Red) Cabernet into one or several of these different sizes.
Now, you may be asking yourself, “Self, is there any reason besides the awesomeness of having a giant bottle of Tom Eddy Wine, that Tom and Kerry would put their finest hand-crafted wines into these oversized bottles?”
The answer is, as you may have guessed, YES!, there is a reason. Ok, it’s time to get technical so put on your wine geek hat and lets dive into some fun facts:
Wines that are built to age (like our Cabernets), have enormously complex chemical reactions constantly taking place with dynamic interactions between tannins, acid, protein and color compounds, just to name a few. Over time, while the wine is in the bottle, tannins are polymerizing (linking together) with each other which softens the mouth-feel, hence the reason why young red wines are generally more astringent than older, properly aged wines.
Oxygen plays a key role in this aging process. Put simply, a small amount of oxygen aids in the polymerization and softening process but too much oxygen ages the wine prematurely.
This is where a natural cork plays its key role by allowing only a small amount of oxygen to trickle over time through its slightly permeable body.
This is exactly why Large Format bottles generally can age for a longer period of time. Since there is so much more volume of wine in these larger bottles and the amount of oxygen that gets into the wine via the cork’s tiny pores is relatively the same as a normal size bottle, the aging process occurs much more slowly.
In other words, a larger ratio of wine-to-oxygen intake allows for a slower, more methodical aging process and older, larger bottles of wine will generally remain fresher and more vibrant than their standard-size counterparts.
So, not only do big bottles of wine inspire one’s jaw to drop in awe, they also serve a great function in the wine’s course of aging. And you just thought they were for big parties!
So the next time someone breaks out a giant bottle of wine at a party, you can bore them with words like “polymerization,” “tannins” and “complex chemical reactions.”…..you’re welcome!
Cheers!
-Jason