Ullage in wine explained: fill levels, risk and value
Updated
Ullage is the one part of a bottle's storage history you can read from across a saleroom, which is why the auction houses publish a scale for it and set their estimates against it.
Ullage is the gap between the base of the cork and the surface of the wine. On a Bordeaux-shaped bottle it is named by where the wine sits: high fill, into neck, very top shoulder, top shoulder, high or upper shoulder, mid shoulder, mid low shoulder, low shoulder, below low shoulder. On a Burgundy-shaped bottle there are no shoulders to name against, so Sotheby's and the rest measure it in centimetres down from the base of the cork. Neither scale means anything until you set it against the bottle's age. Sotheby's calls top shoulder the "usual level for wines or spirits over 15 years old", and Christie's, quoted by Decanter, says mid shoulder "isn't abnormal for a 30 to 40-year-old wine". The same top shoulder on a wine made in 2015 is not age. It is heat, or a cork that has already failed.
**A band that matches the age costs you nothing.
What is ullage in wine, and how do you pronounce it?
Say it to rhyme with "village": UH-lij. Wiktionary lists /ˈʌl.ɪd͡ʒ/ first and /ˈjul.ɪd͡ʒ/ further down.
The word came the long way round. Wiktionary traces it through Middle English ulage and Anglo-Norman ulliage back to ullier, to fill a partially empty cask, and behind that to Old French oel, the bunghole of a cask, literally an eye, and to the Latin oculus. So the word originally named the topping up, not the emptiness. Somewhere between the cooperage and the saleroom it flipped to mean the gap itself.
In a cellar the gap is called ullage. In a catalogue it is abbreviated to u. Sotheby's explains the abbreviation in a lot note: "(u. 3hs) means 3 bottles ullaged to high shoulder", and "(u. 2x5cm) means 2 bottles ullaged 5 centimetres".
Why does the level drop at all?
Two mechanisms, and only one of them is normal.
The normal one is slow permeation. Wine escapes as vapour through the cork and the capsule over decades, which is why every published scale is indexed to age rather than to an absolute level. Waddington's describes high shoulder as slight natural reduction through the easing of the cork and evaporation through cork and capsule.
The abnormal one is heat. The Australian Wine Research Institute states that "leakage of wine and/or movement of cork stoppers due to thermal expansion of wine may result following exposure to temperatures which are significantly greater than ambient temperature", and adds that "thermal cycling where the temperature varies significantly between day and night should be avoided". It puts the working limits plainly: "any storage place where the temperature exceeds 25°C for long periods and 40°C for short periods can affect wine quality". It also cites Robert Parker's 2008 estimate that "somewhere between 10 and 25% of wines sold in the USA have been damaged due to exposure to extreme heat".
There is a newer finding worth knowing, because it changes where you should look. Chanut and colleagues, publishing in PNAS Nexus in 2023, tracked oxygen moving into bottles across 24 months. With model wine present, the glass-to-cork interface accounted for "nearly 75% of total oxygen transfer in comparison to cork studied without model wine", where the same interface ran at roughly 35%. Heat concentrated the damage at that joint rather than in the cork body: at 50°C, "a tremendous oxygen transfer occurring at the glass-cork interface was noticeable, even from 3 months". Over 24 months at 20°C, PNAS Nexus reports that storage position made no difference, vertical or horizontal, either through the cork or at its interface with the glass.
That study measured oxygen going in, not wine going out. But it is the same joint, and it relocates the weak point: on a heat-damaged bottle the leak path runs around the outside of the cork, between cork and glass, which is where the seepage stains under a capsule come from.
The Bordeaux shoulder scale, band by band
The scale in general use descends from the guide Michael Broadbent built at Christie's in the late 1980s. The list includes the named positions against their measurements: 0.5cm high in the neck, 1.5cm at the top of the shoulders, 2.5cm at the upper shoulders, 3 to 3.5cm at mid to mid-low shoulder, and 6 to 7cm at low shoulder or below. Broadbent never copyrighted it, and every house then wrote its own version. They agree on the ladder and disagree on the names.
| Rung | Names in use | What the houses publish | Normal for |
|---|---|---|---|
| High fill | High fill (Tennants) | "Normal fill, level of young wines" (Tennants) | Young wine only |
| Into neck | Into neck (Tennants), bottom neck / bn. (Sotheby's), base neck (Waddington's), base of neck (WineBid) | "completely acceptable for any age of wine or spirit" (Sotheby's); "Outstandingly good for a wine of 10 years in bottle, or ullage" (Waddington's) | Any age |
| Very top shoulder | vts. | "completely acceptable for any age of wine or spirit" (Sotheby's); "an excellent fill level for any wine more than 20 years old" (WineBid) | Any age |
| Top shoulder | ts. | "usual level for wines or spirits over 15 years old" (Sotheby's); "normal for any claret 15 years or older" (Christie's, via Decanter) | 15 years and older |
| High shoulder / upper shoulder | hs. (Sotheby's, Waddington's), Upper Shoulder (Tennants) | "typical reduction through the cork, usually no problem" (Sotheby's); "wine over 20 years old. Exceptional for pre-1950 wines" (Waddington's) | 20 years and older |
| Mid shoulder | ms. | "usually some deterioration of the cork and therefore some variation" (Sotheby's); "Estimates usually take this into account" (Waddington's) | "Not abnormal for wines 30 - 40 years of age" (Waddington's) |
| Mid low shoulder | Mid Low Shoulder, Lower Mid Shoulder (Tennants) | "Some risk" (Tennants) | Tennants is the only scale here that names this rung |
| Low shoulder | ls. | "Risky and usually only accepted for sale if wine or label exceptionally rare or interesting. JERO. JEROBOAM (BURGUNDY, CHAMPAGNE) = 3" (Waddington's) | Never. Sold on rarity |
| Below low shoulder | Bottom shoulder, bs. | "Not acceptable for sale unless a rare sort of bottle. Wine will usually be undrinkable" (Waddington's) | Never |
The clash worth memorising is the rung above mid shoulder. Sotheby's and Waddington's call it high shoulder. Tennants calls it upper shoulder in its written scale, and labels the same band Upper Mid Shoulder on its diagram. You can tell they mean one band because the descriptions match almost word for word: Waddington's "wine over 20 years old. Exceptional for pre-1950 wines" against Tennants' "acceptable for wines 20 years old, exceptional for pre 1950 wines". One band, three names, and a buyer comparing two catalogues will otherwise read one as a step below the other.
Why Burgundy is measured in centimetres
Because there is nothing to measure against. Sotheby's draws the line by bottle geometry rather than by region: "For bottles with defined shoulders the ullage/level is indicated, if applicable, by its relative position in the bottle", while "for Burgundy, German and other wines in bottles with sloping necks the ullage is indicated in centimetres, measured from the base of the cork". A Burgundy bottle's shoulder is a continuous curve. Name a point on it and you have named nothing.
The second difference is tolerance. Waddington's publishes the line that Christie's also uses: "The condition and drinkability of Burgundy is less affected by ullage than its equivalent from Bordeaux." Tennants says the same thing in its own words. A drop that would end a claret's saleroom career is unremarkable on a Côte d'Or bottle of the same age.
| Ullage below the cork | WineBid | Waddington's | Tennants |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2cm or less | "an excellent fill for any age and does not need to be mentioned" | Not specified | Not specified |
| 3cm | "A perfectly normal fill for wines 12 years and older. It is an excellent fill level for wines 25 years or older" | Not specified | Not specified |
| 3.5 to 4cm | 4cm is "a normal fill for wines more than 20 years old and excellent for wines more than 35 years old" | "3.5-4 cm excellent for age" | "3.5-4cm is excellent for its age" |
| 5 to 7cm | 5cm is "Not uncommon in wines 30 years old or older" | A 5 - 7 cm ullage in a 50-year-old Burgundy can be considered normal, indeed good for age | "5-7cm ullage in a 50 year old bottle can be considered normal, or even good" |
| 7cm | Not specified | "7 cm rarely a risk" | "even 7cm is rarely a risk" |
Note where the houses part company. Waddington's and Tennants attach 5 to 7cm to a fifty-year-old bottle, while Christie's, via Decanter, says "ullage of up to 7cm is relatively normal in 30-year-old Burgundy". That is a twenty-year spread of opinion on one measurement. At 7cm on a mature Romanée-Conti you are not reading a rule, you are choosing whose calibration to trust. Two more conventions to keep straight before you compare catalogues: Zachys specifies Champagne measurements "in centimeters from the liquid to the bottom of the foil", and Tennants states that "Champagne ullage is measured from the base of the bottom when inverted".
What fill level is acceptable for the age?
Run the age first, then the band. A 1961 claret at top shoulder is sixty-five years into a slow, documented process, and every house on this page calls that normal. The same top shoulder on a Bordeaux 2015 is a bottle that has lost in eleven years what Sotheby's and Christie's both describe as fifteen years of ordinary loss, and no published scale offers a benign explanation for it.
The houses encode that asymmetry in what they bother to report. Zachys "provides a fill level for all bottles older than and including the 1990 vintage", a cutoff it calls "an admittedly arbitrary date". Waddington's marks pre-1950 wines as a separate case, where high shoulder is "Exceptional" rather than merely acceptable.
So the useful test is not "is this level good" but "is this level early". Early is the alarm. Late is a gift, and a bottle whose fill runs a rung better than its age deserves is the one to bid up.
What does ullage do to the price?
It moves the estimate before the sale and the hammer during it. Waddington's states plainly that at mid shoulder "Estimates usually take this into account", and that low shoulder is "Always offered with low estimate". WineBid describes it in value terms: low fill "can indicate seepage and oxidation of the wine, and affect its value considerably".
None of them publishes the size of the adjustment. That is the number we track.
The question worth answering is whether the discount is a slope or a step. A slope would mean the market marks a bottle down a fixed amount for every rung, whatever its age. A step would mean it pays full price while the band tracks the age and then reprices hard the moment the band runs ahead of it. Waddington's language points at a step, because it moves from "Estimates usually take this into account" at mid shoulder to "Always offered with low estimate" at low shoulder in a single rung. The market index shows the same wines undifferentiated by condition, which is the comparison that makes the adjustment visible.
What does it mean when a catalogue says nothing?
It means something different at every house, and the default is where buyers get caught.
- Sotheby's "does not indicate levels under 3 cm in the necks of the bottles inspected". Silence means better than 3cm on a sloping-neck bottle.
- WineBid: "If no fill level is indicated, that means that it is at the base of the neck of the bottle or higher."
- Zachys reports fill only from the 1990 vintage back. Silence on a 2005 means the lot was never in scope, not that it was inspected and passed.
Read those three defaults side by side and the point makes itself: an unannotated lot is an inspection policy, not a condition report. Check which policy you are reading before you treat a blank field as good news.
Does the level you bid on arrive in your hands?
Not guaranteed, and the houses say so in the same breath as the scale. Waddington's notice reads: "corks over 20 years old begin to lose their elasticity and levels can change between cataloguing and sale. Old corks have also been known to fail during or after shipment." Tennants goes further: Ullage levels or bottle conditions may change as a result of transport… Tennants cannot accept responsibility at any point for failed corks, and no refunds will be given.
That is the real reason condition belongs in your maximum bid rather than in a post-sale complaint. Price the risk into the number, alongside the buyer's premium and the rest of the fee stack, and the disappointment stops being expensive.
Does recorking fix the problem?
It resets the level. It does not reset the history, and the market knows the difference.
Penfolds lists its rules in full. Its clinics take "all cork closure Penfolds red wines, aged fifteen years or older" that have not been re-corked before, sorted on a four-zone ullage measure: light green "doesn't require re-corking", green makes re-corking optional, amber requires it, and red means the wine "is no longer certifiable and will not be re-corked". Winemakers open and assess the qualifying bottles, top them up with "the current vintage of that wine", re-cork and re-capsule them, and finish each one with a certification label signed by a winemaker.
Bordeaux's most visible programme went the other way. The Wine Cellar Insider reports that Lafite Rothschild "no longer holds those open clinics. They stopped that practice before 2005." The same source puts the auction consequence bluntly: recorked bottles "generally speaking, resell for less money than older bottles with the original cork still intact". Unverified reconditioning is the worse case. Jamie Ritchie, head of global wine at Sotheby's, put it to Decanter in one line: "If it cannot be verified, there is a missing link in the provenance."
Which leaves an uncomfortable corollary. A perfect fill on a fifty-year-old bottle is not automatically the best bottle in the lot. It is either exceptional storage or an intervention, and the paperwork is what tells you which. Long-lived wines with deep secondary markets, Pétrus among them, attract both.
Put condition on the price chart, not in the small print
Fill level is a number that moves money, so it belongs next to the money. Every wine on this site carries condition-adjusted price history: what a bottle at into neck fetched, what the same wine and vintage fetched a rung down, and how that gap has moved.
Set an alert on the wines you actually want and we will tell you when a lot appears whose fill is normal for its age but priced as though it were not. That is the trade, and it exists because most bidders still read condition as a footnote rather than as a number.
Start with the condition and provenance guide if you want the full inspection checklist, the producer atlas for Burgundy if the cm scale is your problem rather than the shoulder one, or drink-now if the bottle in question is already in your cellar and the question is when to open it rather than what to pay.