Shoulder Height – Ian Hickinbotham
Ian Hickinbotham
Wine bottles in a South Australian cellar [©Winepros/VisitVineyards.com]
Shoulder height is an auctioneer's expression to describe bottles of dry red wine being offered to potential bidders that are not full of wine. The shoulder is the part of the bottle where the glass narrows to form the neck that holds the cork.
Significantly, it is bottles of wine sealed with corks that are defined as 'shoulder height'. Modern wines sealed with sophisticated screw caps, like the Stelvin, never seem to be partly ullaged. Perhaps such sealed wines have not been around long enough to develop the phenomenon. At least that is a cursory thought till it is appreciated that the Stelvin screw caps have been used instead of corks in Australia since 1969.
That partly empty bottles can be sold at all is also a phenomenon – and a curious one – but the practice seems curiously very English (where there is a ‘museum’ market for bottles never to be drunk). Logically, there must be a lot of them on offer to comprise a class of their own. Further, there must be buyers of such 'defective goods'.
Extraordinarily, such buyers are gambling on the ullage space above the wine in these bottles is not full of quality damaging air. (If it were, the wine could be partially transformed to vinegar and be quite undrinkable.)
Instead, they presume the space above the wine is full of carbon dioxide gas, the pleasant gas of fermentation, also retained in Champagne – for our enjoyment.
Such gas would have come from a small secondary fermentation that occurred after the wine was bottled. It would have been 'small', otherwise the cork would have been expelled – and with some force.
This last fact determines that the secondary fermentation was the gentle malo-lactic fermentation that is due to bacteria converting malic acid in the wine to softer tasting lactic acid, the end acid of many of the food processes of history that make our beer, cheese, yoghurt, sauerkraut, dill gherkins, olives and even salami.
Importantly, no modern winemaker would release wine for sale that could reactivate in this way as he/she would ensure that the natural secondary fermentation occurred in the cellar – before bottling – or fill the bottles asceptically.
So this assertion means that shoulder height bottles at auctions will only be old table wines. And logically, somewhat proving the point, is the fact that only modern winemakers have had the methods of analysis to prove that malic acid was present in their wine at bottling or not, which in turn allows them to conclude that the secondary fermentation has occurred.
Indeed it could be partially finished (by the presence of some malic acid) in which case, bottling would just be further delayed and the wine bulk maintained at a constant temperature to ensure the responsible bacteria completed their task.
Ian Hickinbotham, one of the most innovative and influential oenologists in Australia over his 50 year career, is the author of Australian Plonky (see related review below).
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