1. Oxidized Wine …aka maderized
wine
·
What
it is: Contamination/chemical
breakdown caused by too much oxygen exposure. Rusted metal is oxidized…it’s
that same process but in your wine. Oxidization is the most common wine fault
and is easy to replicate at home with any bottle of wine.
·
How you
can tell: Oxidized
wines lose their brightness, both in color and in flavor. Bright reds turn to
brick color or brownish, and fresh tastes develop drier, more bitter
characteristics. White wines are much more susceptible to oxidization than
reds, because reds’ higher tannin levels act as a buffer. If you really want to
see what this looks like: open a new bottle, pour a glass and save that bottle
for about a week. Congrats, your bottle is ruined. Drink some and compare it to
that first glass you had.
·
Can I
fix it? No,
but you can prolong the shelf life of opened wine by using a wine preserving tool. If your bottle
is oxidized right off the shelf, it was either poorly sealed or mishandled.
Take it back!
2 -Trichloroanisole (TCA) …aka cork
taint
·
What
it is: A chemical
containment that found its way into your bottle somewhere in production,
usually from the wooden cork. TCA can be present in oak barrels, or the
processing lines at the winery as well, which leads to entire batches, rather
than single bottles, being ruined.
·
How
you can tell: Dank
odor and taste like wet newspaper, moldy basement or smelly dog. It’s estimated
that over 2% of bottles are tainted with TCA to some degree, making it the
second most common wine fault.
·
Can I
fix it? Andrew
Waterhouse, professor of wine chemistry at the UC Davis, claims you can pour
the wine into a bowl with a sheet of plastic wrap. The TCA will be attracted to
the polyethylene and pulled from your wine. I say life is too short for fixing
wine faults. Send that bottle back!
3 - Sulfur Compounds
·
What
it is: Sulfur is a
common additive to wine typically used to prevent other wine faults found in
this article (ironically). Sometimes things can go wrong in its deployment
though, and sulfur levels that are out of whack are pretty easy to notice.
·
How
you can tell: There
are 4 primary sulfur compounds that can give your wine some funk, but they all
manifest themselves in terrible flavors and smells. If you notice rotten egg,
fart, burnt rubber, skunk, or asparagus pee in your wine, you probably have a
sulfur problem.
·
Can I
fix it? The
offending flavor can be weakened through decanting (watch this).
If it is strong though, you should send it back from where it came…......!!!
4 - Secondary Fermentation …aka No
..No….. NOT CHAMPAGNE!!
·
What
it is: Tiny bubbles in
your wine where there shouldn’t be any, especially in an old bottle of redwine.
This usually happens when the residual sugar in the bottled wine feeds some
critter introduced in unsanitary bottling.
·
How
you can tell: Duh,
look for the bubbles or listen for the psssst. There can also be a bit of a
zippy flavor. Not all secondary
fermentation is on accident though. Some winemakers will use it to add a little
kick to their wines, and some styles are naturally frizzante such as vinho verde or some gruner
veltliners.
·
Can I
fix it? No,
but do some research into the style to make sure it is not supposed to be
there.
5 - Heat Damage …aka cooked
wine
·
What
it is: Wine ruined by
exposure to too much heat. Imagine a pallet of wine cases cooking in the sun in
the parking lot behind a wine store in Phoenix , AZ.
·
How
you can tell: The
wine smells jammy: sort of sweet, but processed. The smell reminds me of
canning or making wine sauce. Heat damage often compromises the seal of the
bottle (the expansion from the heated air pushes the cork out) so it can be
accompanied by oxidization.
·
Can I
fix it? No,
but you can store your wine at the proper temperature and ensure you are not
the problem. 55 degrees is pretty well accepted as the best cellar temperature.
Be mindful of how hot your garage gets in the summer if that’s where you store
your wine. Don’t store wine in your attic.
6 - UV Light Damage …aka lightstrike
·
What
it is: Damage caused by
exposure to excessive radiation, usually UV. Most commonly from storing wine in
the sun or near a window.
·
How
you can tell: Lightstrike
is most common in delicate white wines like Champagne
·
Can I
fix it? No,
but you can be smart about storing your wine out of direct sunlight. The
colored glass of wine bottles is supposed to mitigate lightstrike; so if you
get a homemade white wine in a mason jar, put it in the darkest corner of your
cellar.
7 - Microbial Taints …aka I
think there is something is cooking in there
·
What
it is: Could be lots of
things. Remember that wine is a product of microbial activity, and a lot of the
handling of the wine in production is to make these microbes as happy as clams.
There can be rogue strains of yeast that hijack the wine, or foreign critters
that evaded sanitization.
·
How
you can tell: Again,
there are many bad guy bacteria out there. They all impart certain flavors and
produce signature wine faults that fancy-pants Sommes brag about being able to
distinguish, but mostly the bacteria all spoil the
wine. They can have medicinal (think band-aid or rubbing alcohol), animal
(think rodent cage or barnyard), or microbial (think yeasty sour things)
flavors that are all pretty nasty.
·
Can I
fix it? No,
that flavor is either the critters themselves or their poo. Grab the microscope
and go exploring! ! ! !
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