Just got this Mark Angelo Ferme de la Sansonniere La Lune 2021 second hand on an auction platform. When I received it I noticed the small hole. Is this normal? My fear would be a coravin hole of course, and that the wine had been emptied and refilled with something cheaper.
by StainedInZurich
8 Comments
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You may need to remove the rest of the wax to know for sure.
I’ve never attempted to put a coravin needle through wax, and I don’t think I would for fear of damaging the needle or filling it with wax
Cork looks ok. Might have been an air bubble in the wax.
I doubt it has been refilled, the wine is simply not high end enough for anyone to do that. It does look very weird though, I would probably return it.
Im sure it was a bubble on the wax, Martial isn’t very good at waxing, basically everything I have from them with wax is a little rustic.
Getting a Coravin needle through wax can be less than trivial, depending on the wax.
The jaws(?) of the coravin also leave imprints on the sides, though I imagine that can presumably be avoided if you use a teatowel? Never tried doing that.
I’ve seen plenty of wax-top bottles with imperfections similar to that. It’s the consequence of an air bubble that sometimes forms on the surface: if you dip the bottle straight down and the cork is not completely flush with the bottle, some air can get trapped and eventually escapes through a hole like that before the wax fully solidifies.
I can’t guarantee it hasn’t been tapped, but it feels unlikely. I could just about believe someone had a taste, but it’s certainly not the sort of wine where siphoning it just to replace it. The former can be checked, kind of – is the fill level quite low? If you put a light behind the neck you should be able to see that.
Tl;dr: it’s probably fine and it has almost certainly not been replaced. It’s just about plausible someone tapped it for a small taste, but also seems unlikely (and is certainly not the likeliest explanation for the hole).
Honestly. I wouldn’t worry about it. Angelil is pretty rustic, and the cork looks intact under, if it had been coravined, there would be a hole in the cork. also how would they refill through coravin? seems like a lot of work, for not much money, and you need to have the angelil bottles to begin with. esp considering they have to pay money on the auction side also.
Bangin wine!