A label tells you what went into the bottle. It says nothing about the decades since. Two bottles of the same wine from the same vintage can be a great evening and an expensive disappointment, and the difference is how they were kept. Buyers of old wine have learned to read that history from the outside.
Fill level
Wine evaporates slowly through the cork, and the air that replaces it ages the wine faster. The gap between the cork and the wine, called ullage, is the best outside clue to how a bottle has fared.
For bottles with shoulders, the Bordeaux shape, the trade describes the level by where the wine sits:
- Into the neck or base of neck: what you hope to see, and normal for young wine.
- Top shoulder: generally accepted for a wine of fifteen years or more.
- Upper to mid shoulder: a sign of some loss. Buyers expect a lower price and accept some risk.
- Low shoulder and below: a gamble, usually bought for the label or not at all.
Bottles with sloping shoulders, the Burgundy shape, have no landmarks, so the level is given as a distance below the cork in centimetres.
Age matters in reading it. A level that would worry you in a ten-year-old wine can be perfectly reasonable in one that is fifty.
To see the level, hold the bottle upright against a light. If you are photographing it, take the neck and shoulder with the light behind.
Storage
Wine keeps best somewhere cool, dark, still and slightly humid, at a steady temperature around 55°F (13°C), with the bottle on its side so the cork stays moist. Steadiness matters as much as the number: a cellar that swings between seasons works the cork like a pump.
Heat is the common killer. Its signs are a cork pushed up against the capsule, sticky residue where wine has seeped past it, and a capsule that no longer turns freely. A bottle showing these has probably been cooked at some point, whatever the label says.
Stains and scuffs on the label are a different matter. A damp cellar is good for wine and bad for paper, so a marked label can be a sign of proper storage. It lowers the price somewhat for appearance alone.
Provenance
Provenance is the record of where a bottle has been. The strongest version is short: bought on release, stored professionally ever since, with paperwork. Each of these helps:
- Receipts and storage records.
- The original wooden case, ideally still banded.
- A known chain of owners rather than a bottle that surfaced from nowhere.
For the most expensive wines provenance is also the main defence against counterfeits. A rare bottle with no history deserves more suspicion than a common one.
Bottle size
Large formats age more slowly, because there is more wine for the same small amount of air. Magnums of fine wine are made in smaller numbers and often sell for more than two standard bottles. Half bottles mature faster and are usually priced accordingly.
Spirits are different
Whisky, cognac and rum do not improve in the bottle, and they are far more robust. But the outside still tells a story. A low fill on an old bottle means evaporation through a tired closure. An intact seal matters. And the bottling era, read from the label design, the closure, and on older American bottles the paper tax strip over the cap, places a bottle in time and often in value.
Checking a bottle
Photograph the label straight on with the Worth app and it reads the producer, the wine and the vintage, and gives a range. Then answer the questions a label cannot: how full the bottle is, and how it has been stored. Add a photo of the neck and shoulder, or a line such as “top shoulder, cellar kept since purchase”, and the estimate is worked out again with that in hand. It is an estimate from a photo, not a condition report, but it will tell you quickly whether a bottle deserves a closer look.