Wine Faults

Wine is a  living agricultural-derived product that, unfortunately, can have a number of faults. Following are the ones you are more likely to see. Luckily, they don't appear too often. Many are winemaking faults, but some happen after the finished wine has left the winery and may even be your fault. If you don't believe it was your responsibility then return the wine to where it was purchased.

Bottle Shock

The wine won't have much smell or flavor. It's closed in, it's flat. Bottle shock is from just too much movement of the wine. Think of having some wine shipped to your home then you can't wait so you open a bottle right away -- and are disappointed. You should probably have the wine sit and not be moved around for a week of two before opening. Wine is also in bottle shock immediately after it's bottled by the winery. Most winemakers will let it sit for at least a month or two before releasing it for sale. Think of bottle shock as the wine getting bruised in travel and needs to heal.

Brettanomyces (bret-tan-oh-my-sees) or Brett

Smells like a barnyard or maybe wet leather, wet horse, or Band-Aid. For some drinkers, a little adds a bit of complexity. For most this is totally off-putting. Brett comes from winemaking environments that aren't as clean as they could be.

Cork Taint

Smells funky, moldy, wet cardboard, wet dog. Sometimes it can be barely detectable, but knocks down the fruit flavors in the wine. This was a bigger deal about 20 years ago, but still happens. It's a problem with cork, but can actually be passed around the cellar and theoretically affect even a screw top bottle.

Heat Damaged

Smells cooked or you could say like cooked fruit. Over-heating a wine destroys pretty much all the characteristics of a wine and just leaves the cooked smell. Heating up the wine in any way for a long enough time will destroy it. Often you'll see the cork slightly popped out of the neck of the bottle; maybe wine is seeping out. This, unfortunately, is too common. Shipping wine in the summer to hot areas or leaving wine in a hot car is what often causes this. Don't buy wine off a store shelf that looks like it might get direct sun through a window. At home store your wine in the coolest part of your house.

Oxidation

Smells like stewed fruit, nutty, musty, like sherry, or a white wine might smell like a tawny port. Red wines may have turned brown especially around the edges in the glass; whites turn a brownish yellow. Oxidation is just like it sounds -- too much exposure to the air. A little bit is a part of the winemaking process; too much is a flaw. Many red wines are made with lots of oxygen content these days giving you that big soft fruit flavor, but if it goes too far you get a port-like wine. You've likely had oxidized wine at home when you've opened a bottle, but don't finish it then try it again a couple days later.

Reduction

Smells like a lit match or sometimes rotten eggs (a sulfur smell). Reduction is the opposite of oxidation in that it's not enough oxygen got into the wine so you're left with too much sulfur. Try decanting or pouring a glass, swirling it, then let it sit for a while to let the sulfur blow off.

Secondary Fermentation

You hear gas escaping when you pop the cork like you might in a bottle of sparkling wine. There's a spritz to the wine. The primary fermentation coverts the grapes' sugars to alcohol. If the wine is bottles with some sugar left along with live yeast cells it'll continue to ferment in the bottle. A byproduct of fermentation is CO2 and that's the gas in your wine. Let the wine sit in your glass, swirl it, and let the gas disperse.

Volatile Acidity

Smells like nail polish remover or sometimes vinegar. You'll definitely know this one when you smell it. All wines contain acetic acid, but you usually don't notice it. This is something I noticed in a few wine back in the '80s or so, but seems rare now.