Wine flaws to be on the look out for

Wine came to be as a way to preserve the nutrients of the highly perishable grapes. Ironically, wine itself is susceptible to mishaps of all kinds. How do they arise and how to know if your wine has gone bad? Here is a list of the most common wine flaws and how to spot them.

Corked Wine

Perhaps the most talked about of all flaws is corked wine. Also known as cork taint, it is due to the presence of a compound called TCA (tri-choloro something) in the wine and it usually enters the bottle through the cork. In some rare instance, the fungus causing TCA is present on the bottling line/wine-making and if undetected, whole batches go bad…

Corked wine has a musty, wet cardboard smell. I usually find that the wine smells like bleach since TCA is a derivative of chlorine. Put that wine in your mouth and you will find that the fumes go straight to your nose.

Heat Damage or cooked wine

If you leave an apple in the sun, it will inadvertently turn bad. The heat (and to some extend the light rays) speeds up chemical reactions in the fruit and changes the latter’s chemical composition. Similarly, wine being made out of grapes does not like to break a sweat. In South Africa’s hot summer, 30C is fairly cool and you can bet that your delicate floral Viognier is not having a good time. Moreover, be careful of leaving your wine in the sun or in your car, where temperatures can sky rocket. Even if it is 20C outside, it can heat up to 40 inside a car on the parking lot.

You can avoid this by not leaving your bottles unattended and planning your trip so that picking those bottles of vino is the last thing on the to-do list. If you are doing some wine farm hopping, just bring your bottles with you if you can’t find a spot in the shade. Also, make sure that your wines are stored properly at home.

Cooked wine tastes similar to what it name suggests. It will be overly jammy and smells and tastes of stewed fruit. Sure some wine do taste like stewed fruit if the fruits were picked very ripe but in that case, it will be more intense and a tad artificial.

Oxidised wine

I tried to avoid as much chemistry as possible in this post but it seems that it is all in vain. Wine contains alcohol and when exposed to air, the alcohol turns into vinegar. This is exactly what happens when you leave unfinished wine open on the kitchen counter overnight. In some cases, oxidising the wine is actually a desirable effect like in madeira or in Banyuls. As a random fun fact, Banyuls is a wine made in Languedoc-Rousillon where crazy frenchmen age the wine in glass bonbonnes in the sun. You can find more about it here. Warning: it is all in french.

Oxidised wine reminds of sherry and madeira, since both are heavily oxidised. Usually, it won’t have any freshness or fresh fruit characteristics and might taste nutty. If it also tastes like vinegar, it is probably not good anymore.

Myths

Smelling the cork tells you if the wine is corked.

Rhetorical question: What does cork smells like?

Concluding Remarks

Wine that is badly corked (or damaged) is easy to spot, but if it is only slightly affected, it becomes harder. In particular, if you haven’t tasted the wine before, it can be tricky. It will usually not be very fruity but might just taste dull. Is it a bad wine or just bad bottle?

Sometimes the wine can “bounce” back so leave the bottle on the counter for a little bit before pouring it down the sink. A reputable winery aims to minimise the risks of flaws in their wine. Likewise, a reputable distributor does the same as the wine could be damaged during transport or on the shelf. However, the risk zero does not exists and if you happen to get a flawed bottle, return it and the retailer should take it back.

If you wish to read more about wine flaws, head over to wine folly for more.