Faulty wine? Or is it supposed to taste like that!
I sent a bottle of wine back the other day as I thought it was faulty. It had a very slight musty smell to it in the glass and I wasn’t happy it was right. Now I’ve never sent wine back before in a restaurant so I was interested to see what reaction I got and it couldn’t have been better.This was in a newly opened restaurant in the heart of London so they may not have had a customer question the quality of a wine before. However the barman agreed with my assessment and the manager came over and thanked me for pointing it out so, all in all, it was a pleasant experience which shows you should never be put off returning wine for fear of looking a fool or even a wine snob.
The fault was probably TCA in the cork and is one of these faults that has many people advocating screwcaps instead of cork. As I love Portugal, and much of the cork used in wine bottles comes from there, I hope wine producers continue to use cork as it’s an important source of income for many small farmers.
Without getting too technical wine faults are either reductive or oxidative. Reductive means the yeasts have struggled for oxygen often for lack of nutrients in the fruit. A good example of a reductive fault is sulphides or the smell of a struck match or even rotten egg. This fault is more prevalent in young wines rushed to market. Wines that are oxidised are, at extreme, vinegar.
However there are some faults that are acceptable in wine as long as they are in balance and don’t dominate. That farmyard smell you get from some French wines such as Chateauneuf du Pape is part of the style of the wine and is caused by “brett” but the same smell in a New World wine made from the same combination of grapes would be unacceptable.
So next time you smell something that doesn’t seem quite right, discuss it with the restaurant or shop where you bought it. You will be doing the winemaker a favour as it is not his intention to produce faulty wine and the only way producers find out is if they get feedback from us consumers. And you might be pleasantly surprised at the reaction you get.
