When you stick your nose in a glass of wine, what do you smell? Most of the time, the aroma will be fruity, floral or spicy. The wine may even be earthy or smell of smoked meats (as in a Northern Rhone Syrah), or buttery and tropical. All pleasant scents. But what if you smell rotten eggs, wet newspaper or a barnyard? More than likely that wine is flawed. And that's a wine you don't want to keep in your glass. If you're at home, dump it down the drain; at a bar or restaurant, send it back (more on this later).
One of wine's dirty little secrets is that there are bottles on the market that contained flawed, faulty juice. Some times a wine gets spoiled somewhere along the way in the winery, and some times it happens after bottling, during shipping or storage at a retail or restaurant location or even in your home. You know how wine is supposed to be stored at about 55ºF, in a dark space with low humidity and no vibration? This doesn't always happen.
I recently completed a course at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa Valley called "Sensory Analysis of Wine." The thing that made me want to take such a technical sounding course (which it wasn't) was learning how to identify flaws and faults in wine. I know many of the good aromas, but I didn't know the bad, or off aromas. It's possible I've sipped a few faulty wines but didn't know it and just thought the wine was funky. You've probably done that too, or perhaps you had a glass of wine you didn't like but couldn't say why. Most likely it was flawed.
We went through six common wine odor defects. Once you know them, you'll be able to smell them right away.
Oxidized -- The wine will smell like a sherry, and may smell stale, nutty or even like burnt marshmallow or stewed fruit. The wine's color can offer a clue too. Usually an oxidized wine will be turning a shade of brown -- brick red for reds, and golden to tawny for whites. An oxidized wine can mean it was subjected to hot temperatures, was not stored properly or was exposed to air. If you order a wine by the glass and it smells a little stale, ask how long the bottle has been open; it's probably been a few days. Not good. Keep in mind a newly opened bottle can also be oxidized.
Volatile Acidity -- Does that glass of wine smell like vinegar or remind you of nail polish remover or Easter egg dye? Volatile Acidity (also called VA) is the culprit, and it is a bacterial spoilage.
Sulfur -- I had a strong reaction to this glass, and it wasn't a good one. Stinky and offensive, hydrogen sulfide has the unmistakable scent of rotten eggs. While sulfur is used in winemaking to prevent microbes and bacteria, overuse or improper use can cause it to form hydrogen sulfide or dimethyl sulfide. (Not to be confused with sulfites.)
Brettanomyces -- For years I've heard the term "brett," and that some people love what it does to wine and others do not. But I didn't know what the heck it smelled like until this class. Think of cherry cough syrup, Band-aids, or smokey, barnyardy or horsey aromas. I'm told a sweaty horse blanket is a ringer for brett. Brettanomyces is a yeast spoilage. Old world wines may have a tiny amount of brett that some wine drinkers covet. You can also find brett in some Belgian Trappist beers
Cork Taint -- I know what a corked wine is. But I am still surprised at how many of my friends and family don't know it when it's stinking up their glass. This means that the wine's been spoiled, or tainted by a chemical called 2,4,6-trichloroanisole, or more commonly TCA, that can develop in cork. When I smell corked wine, it's wet newspaper, dank basement, wet shaggy dog and musty. While the wine won't hurt you if you drink it, it's not a pleasant beverage because the cork taint will mask fruitiness. Open another bottle of wine -- odds are that even if it's from the same producer it's not corked. But get a new, clean wine glass. The corked odor hangs around even after you've dumped the wine out.
Sulfites -- Get a matchbook and strike a match. What you are smelling is sulfite. Sulfur dioxide is a sulfite, and a common antioxidant added to wine, to prevent bacterial contamination. You may get this odor from a newly bottled wine.
If you find any of these flaws in your wine glass, dump it out, send it back. Sure, sending a bottle back, especially an expensive one, is intimidating. The best way to handle this is to ask your server or the wine director to confirm what you are smelling. He or she should promptly send out a new glass or bottle. What gets people in trouble is sending back a wine because they don't like it. But wine and restaurant professionals realize that wine comes with faults. If you bought the wine from a grocery store or wine shop, cork it up and take it back to the retailer as soon as you can. You should get a replacement bottle or a refund.
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Why do you say wine should be stored at low humidity? Low humidity will dry out corks fom the outside and facilitate random bottle oxidation. A humidity of around 70% to 75% will mostly ensure that this doesn't happen, while it's still low enough to prevent label deterioration.
What I mean is that most americans think that Welch's grape juice, jam or jelly.
Less than one percent of the world's wine is made from this species of grapes, which has a very distinctive taste.
Go to the store and buy some Thompson seedless grapes, Compare the flavors (not the taste: sweet, sour, salt and bitter) to an apple or a peach or most any other fruit. I am sure you will notice that the grape is relatively neutral.
Most wine grapes are in between these two extremes, the flavors not as intense as a peach but not as neutral as the table grapes.
Wine grape flavors are neutral as a rule (an exception being Muscat type grapes). The flavors of wine are subtle and not always easy to find and wine grapes tend to have less distinct flavors than Concord or Muscat.
This is what makes wine fun but can also be what makes it BS at times
Now which is more of an issue, needlessly stopping your own enjoyment of wines by being the person who can pick out the slightest fault that may be present, or being able to look beyond a minor issue and enjoy the individuality that often lies behind.
I've long thought that far more of a problem in the world of wine is the rank dullness of all the very cool ferment whites that all smell of cantaloupe melon and pear esters. Neither of which is yet viewed as a fault, but both of which are produced during fermentation if the temperature is low enough and the cultured yeasts are the right variety....
Oxidation - is present in most wines sealed under cork that have been aged for a while, it is merely the sign of a good winemaker that the oxidation process has been managed well. For all the wine styles that are plagued by 'bad' oxidative problems, e.g. white Burgundy there are those where it is part of the wines make up, most fortifieds, a lot of sweet wines that are designed for the long haul.
As spiltwine mentioned, VA is regularly used to give the wine just a little lift on the nose, here the issue is concentration levels. Also in it's most problematic occurrences it's intrinsically linked with oxidation as it will be present as noticeable acetic acid.
Sulphur/Sulphites is a hard one, for all that there are many wine makers who argue that it acts as a selective pressure on yeast populations during fermentation and thus is to be discouraged, there are equally many who stress that it is an essential part of their wines complexity, the multitude of low level sulphides giving the wine a certain 'minerality'.
A growing problem with the globalisation of wine is the bleached out production process.
Completely sterile conditions can, in many cases, make completely sterile wine.
Agreed, Brett in VERY small quantities can be tolerated.
But that same caveat should have been mentioned with VA.
Playing with VA is a sort of winemakers Russian roulette and when done wrong will ruin the wine completely, as you say - vinegar.
BUT, when done correctly, when monitored closely, with the palate rather than through analysis, VA can create an amazing lift to the wine. This is detected mostly on the nose and less so on the palate.
It can be argued that the Italians are the best at this, but the French too are great at ‘playing’ with VA. Myself, I have found GREAT examples throughout the Languedoc.
I am slightly surprised that a course in Napa didn’t explore this, as here too, in the heart of sterile wine making, producers play with VA, quite successfully.
Nothing is worse than having to eat rare/raw steak when you asked for medium rare, or drink a wine that is unpalatable/undrinkable.
Sending it back because there is something wrong with it is PEFECTLY acceptable. What is NOT acceptable is being obnoxious or rude about it when you do.
Any wait staff who act as if they are put-upon by your request for edible food--for which you are paying--should be reported to a maitre d' at once, and then you should follow up with a politely-worded, but decisive, note to the owner of the establishment.