What’s Wrong with My Wine?
You know the scenario. It’s a buzzing weekday evening and you’ve managed to snag a table in one of your favourite restaurants to meet a couple of your best-loved humans. Coats are checked, hugs are exchanged, and you order a bottle of what you assume will be a delicious vino. The sommelier arrives tableside with said bottle and acknowledges your discerning judgment with a knowing smile. The bottle is opened, a small taste is poured. You raise the glass to your nose–no pressure!–and inhale.
Then your olfactory system tingles with the spellbinding aromas of … a flooded basement. WTF? Isn’t Chablis supposed to smell like lemon curds and salty sea air? Not today, pal. You try to stay cool. You don’t want to offend the sommelier or seem pompous to your friends. Still, try as you might, you just can’t conceal your concern, because this wine is costing £100—and it’s corked. But how can you be sure, and what should you say? Look, if an Englishman like me who’d rather cut off his own head than cause a scene in a restaurant can send a faulty wine back, so can you. Here’s what you need to know.
First off, yes, wine goes bad—even in 2024. Recent media reports that wine faults have been virtually eliminated (due to screw caps and improved winemaking) have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, stumble into the wrong trattoria, the one stocked with cases of Chianti stored next to a radiator, or a wine bar specialising in “natural” toilet cleaners, and you’ll see that those reports are just plain wrong.
Screw caps are to corks what MP3s are to vinyl: a triumph of consistency over panache. It is true that they lack the ritual, tradition, and oxygen permeability (something that’s important for wines to evolve) of what they replace, but here’s the upside: any bottle that they seal will never smell like the aforementioned flooded basement or a damp cardboard box (another telltale sign of “cork taint”). A corked wine has nothing to do with bits of broken cork floating in it. “Corked” means that a specific cork has been infected with snappily titled 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA for short). It’s a distinctive aroma, although some old clarets have a similar musty fragrance when opened and just need time to breathe. On the palate, corked wines are dull and the flavours don’t continue after swallowing. Politely pull your server to one side, say you think that the wine is corked and ask them to check it again. If there’s any question of a wine not being in pristine condition, a good restaurant should always replace it. Unscrupulous operators might quibble and say there’s nothing wrong. Dare them to open another bottle of exactly the same wine. The difference between the two should prove that your nose is right.
The vast majority of faulty wine is drunk because people presume that it’s supposed to taste like it does. Don’t be misled. Be confident that if it smells like a waterlogged cellar—or, much worse, if it has feral flavours and aromas reminiscent of a mouse cage doused in sour milk (how’s that for a mental image?)—it’s not your lack of experience but the wine that’s at fault. “Mouse taint,” also known as “mousiness” or “puppy breath,” is a bacterial infection that originates in rotten grapes and is exacerbated by the absence of sulphur dioxide during winemaking. It is a common fault in incompetently made natural wines, and usually detected on the finish, as it needs a drinker’s saliva to raise the pH and activate the aromas “retro-nasally.” Although the science behind mouse taint is still being studied, some people are more sensitive to it than others, just as they are to the yeast Brettanomyces bruxellensis.
At low levels, Brettanomyces bruxellensis—aka “brett”—can add complexity to a wine. But when the chemical compounds that it produces start to dominate, which means you’re getting an overload of old leather saddles and barnyards and medical plasters, for me the only place that wine is heading is down the kitchen sink. Some classic estates such as Lebanon’s Château Musar and Southern Rhône’s Château de Beaucastel often have higher levels of brett in their wine, which their fans appreciate. Grapes such as mourvèdre, carignan, and syrah are more susceptible to brett than others, and keeping it at bay requires cool temperatures, rigorous winery hygiene, and judicious levels of sulphur dioxide.
Oxygen is essential for turning grape must into wine, but too much of it at the wrong time turns it into vinegar instead. Some traditional Riojas, Barolos, and sherries are deliberately exposed to oxygen to give “oxidative” characteristics like leather and dried fruit. But many wines get too much oxygen through bad handling, resulting in whites that taste like bruised apples and reds that smell of blood and bouillon cubes. Be on the alert for such telltale signs of oxidation. Premature oxidation, aka “premox,” has blighted white Burgundy since the mid-1990s, with many bottles spoiling long before usual. Premoxed Chardonnays develop honeyed, flat, sherry-type aromas and lose all vitality. There’s still no consensus on the cause, with many potential theories. Much remains unexplained, including how premox has continued for so long without anyone finding a reliable solution.
There are many other wine faults, some of which aren’t really faults at all. Tartrate crystals show up in some chilled white wines; they are harmless and not–as some fear–tiny shards of broken glass. The unblemished technologically made wines of the 1990s resulted in cloudiness becoming a taboo, but the rise of natural wine has brought back some perspective. Many cloudy wines can be extraordinarily delicious. Elsewhere, specific vintages have been spoiled due to environmental disasters. In California and Australia, smoke taint from forest fires has caused havoc in vineyards in recent years, contaminating wines with unattractive aromas. The “green,” underripe characteristics of 2004 Burgundian pinot noir are said to have been caused by an infestation of ladybugs in the vines. Once crushed, the bugs allegedly released a chemical that tasted of green vegetables. Yet no self-respecting nutritionist would recommend this blighted juice as a good source of fibre.
Back in that trattoria with the cases of Chianti stacked next to a radiator, heat damage is the thing to look for. This is caused by excessive swings in temperature during transportation or storage, making corks expand and contract, thus breaking a bottle’s airtight seal and making oxidation more likely. It’s another reason why provenance is everything when buying mature bottles—you want to know where those bottles have been hanging out. Then there are wines with too much acetic acid—vinegar, really—where volatile acidity hasn’t been carefully managed. Or those that have become so starved of oxygen and nutrients from poor “reductive” winemaking that they develop volatile sulphur compounds. But wait, this is getting depressing; in such uncertain times, I don’t want you to worry about all the potential problems—I want you to enjoy your night out with friends. Ultimately, if a wine smells like rotten eggs, blocked drains, mouse cages, Rudy Giuliani’s underpants, or a sherry when it is really a white Burgundy, it’s probably not your nose at fault. Stay cool and be bold enough to request another bottle. You won’t be the jerk at the table—you’ll be the hero. Chin-chin.
Dan Keeling is the editor and cofounder of London’s Noble Rot magazine and restaurants. His new book, Who’s Afraid of Romanée-Conti? A Shortcut to Drinking Great Wines, is out now.
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