A bottle of 2001 Cornas from August Clape got me wondering recently about a thing called bottle variation. You see, the Cornas was a show stopper. My notes read: “Mouth-watering aromas of green olives and black fruit. A huge syrah, rich, maybe a little monolithic, but with loads of ripe plum and distinct olive and grilled meat characteristics. The clear favorite at the table, where we enjoyed it with homemade pasta and red sauce with sausage.”

Problem is, I’ve had a bunch of this wine (I originally bought a case) and I don’t remember loving it. To find out why, perhaps, click here for .

First I theorized I drank the other bottles too early. Cornas, a 100 percent syrah made in the northern Rhone in France, is a very traditionally-made, sometimes hard and tannic wine that famously requires lots of bottle aging.

But then I looked at my fellow tasters’ notes on cellartracker.com and was amazed to see how deeply disappointed half were, versus how passionately enamored the other half read. Same wine, same vintage! “Red, flat, and boring,” said one. (How uninspired do you have to be, to say only “red” when summing up a red wine? Plus, in Cornas, red is the only wine they make!) On the other side, tasters confessed they’d unequivocably fallen in love.

Now I’m thinking that my 2001 Clape Cornas is the victim of bottle variation, which happens when some samples from the same wine simply turn out better than others. Bottle variation isn’t something that lots of people run into, especially casual drinkers, because most wine is made in large quantities and at pretty modern facilities that have a lot of control over their overall quantity. But some wines, especially artisanal ones like my Cornas — August Clape makes only about two thousand cases annually from a mere 10 acres — can show marked differences between individual bottles. Some of the production might have been fermented in older, funkier wooden vats; some grapes might have been picked riper than others; some vats might have gone into bottle later than others, etc. And although Clape blends the final wine after fermenting and aging each vineyard lot separately, the individuality of some of the original batches might still shine through.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to my next Clape Cornas, just to see if I’m depressed or elated by it. I’ll let you know.