Spotting Faults
There are several wine faults. Most come from poor winemaking or from
defective materials, especially corks. Faults vary in intensity - some
merely lessening the potential pleasure from a bottle, others making it
undrinkable.
Not all tasters are equally sensitive to particular faults - some notice
a corked wine in seconds, while others may pick up on too much sulphur.
Main faults
Corked - the wine smells and tastes musty and sour. Caused by
a fault in the cork whereby a chemical called TCA destroys the wine.
Oxidised - a wine that has had too much contact with oxygen.
It has a sherry-like smell. Oxidised white wine is curiously dark in colour
for its age while red is abnormally brown for its age. All wines gradually
oxidise as they get older. This is an essential part of the ageing process.
However, some wines are prematurely old. This may be due to poor handling
of the grapes after they have been picked, faults in the winemaking or
because the cork has provided an imperfect seal.
Over-sulphured - a wine that smells of burnt matches and leaves
a sour taste in the back of the throat. It will often leave you with a
foul headache the next morning. Sulphur dioxide is widely used as a necessary
'disinfectant' in wine-making. Many winemakers now, however, try to use
as little sulphur as possible. Today sulphur levels are generally much
lower than they were twenty or thirty years ago.
Hydrogen-sulphide - bad egg smells that come from winemakers
not paying sufficient attention during fermentation. Equally, they can
occur if the wine has not been racked adequately while it matures.
Unclean barrels ('barrel taint') - can give wine an unpleasant
musty taste which is often very similar to a corked wine. Barrels, especially
any that are empty for a while, have to be kept scrupulously clean to
avoid tainting the wine. Where possible winemakers prefer to keep their
barrels full with wine.
Acetic acid - common to all wines. In excess it will make the
wine smell and taste vinegary.
By Jim Budd
What is tasting? | Looking
| Smelling |
Tasting | Spitting
| Assessing
| Spotting
faults
|
