I'm beginning to notice a slightly disturbing trend in my early arrival 2000 Bordeaux's, the fill levels are just above the base of the neck. Now, I know this isn't normal, because I have had past vintages and the fills were higher. In particular, Faugeres. The other two I have noticed are Vieux Chateau Palon and Rollan d'By.

Am I being shortchanged? Is there some conspiracy in bordeaux to maximize the number of bottles being produced?

Or am I just paranoid?

In my experience, fill levels just above the base of the neck are not that unusual in Bordeaux.

For a variety of reasons including secondary market performance, I often go to the retailer and inspect every bottle of wine that I have purchased as a future (or otherwise) prior to accepting delivery. Oftentimes, if you get there early enough and they still have undelivered bottles of what you bought, you can exchange out low fills with other bottles not in your case. With some wineries though there is nothing you can do because they all look like that.

Once, I found a bottle of Montebello where they forgot to put a cork in it at all and only the lead foil (this was way back when lead was still ok - pre actual implementation of Proposition 65) was keeping the wine in the bottle. Needless to say, I did not take delivery of that bottle. Ridge opened the bottle up then and there and it still tasted fine however.

Yesterday I took shipment of a case of Saxon Brown Zin and one of the bottles was half full with cork and capsule attatched.

Yet another reason for checking out all wines before you buy them.