Sunday, April 20, 2008
Food, Wine, Beer & Spirits

True or Faults

Triage for a wine’s ills

TAG:Wine & Spirits

PHOTO:cork
CREDIT:Fanfo
CUTLINE:Corks aren’t the only thing that can screw up a good wine.


By Jason Tesauro and Phineas Mollod

    The leather-bound list felt right in your hands. You perused familiar vintages and scouted a few unknown producers. The server nodded in that “excellent, sir” kind of way and fetched your bottle. The cap was cut, the cork pulled and the nectar poured forth. Upon first sniff, something was askance. You give it another swirl and sniff, and your Spidey sense tingles. Time to summon the sommelier. “Trust but verify,” said Ronald Reagan of Cold War de-armament, but the same is so for vino. Trust your nose, but verify with your palate—unless, of course, the wine is so obviously befouled as to render tasting a suicide mission for the tongue.

    We’ve all regretfully glug-glugged a corked bottle down the drain, but besides the dreaded TCA (aka “cork taint,” reminiscent of moldy old newspaper/cardboard) that befouls 3–5 percent of all wines sealed with natural cork, what are the other common faults that turn a wine from ducky to sucky? First, keep in mind that while some faults (i.e. TCA) find the producer an innocent victim, others fall squarely on the viniculturist and viticulturist who are growing the grapes and making the wine. Winemaking involves complex chemical reactions, involving sugars, fermentation, and other yeasty beasties blended in an atmosphere that can result in unwanted substances left behind. Second, just like that friend with a big schnozzola but a killer sense of humor, faults don’t necessarily mean that a wine’s completely hopeless, rather it may just reduce that bottle for use en masse at your next backyard bacchanal according to that time-honored tenet: Pour crap for the hordes, but horde your best crap.

    What are some lesser-known faults?

Volatile Acidity (VA). A vinegar or nail polish remover odor caused by an excess of either acetic acid or ethyl acetate. Although the latter is acceptable at low levels in red wines and in botrytised wines like Sauternes, acetic acid overtakes whites with a hot mouthfeel.

Oxidation. When wines that aren’t Sherry smell like Sherry or brown apple, you’ve got an oxidized wine. Too little sulfur dioxide or too much oxygen in the bottle leaves white wines with an unattractive brown hue. Tesauro experienced this vino cataclysm upon opening a gifted ’76 Dom Perignon that had been “stored” for a decade in a hot cabinet above the fridge; after a few forced sips of the brownish cider, it was honorably dumped.

Sulfur Dioxide. This antibiotic and antioxidant is a natural byproduct of winemaking that is also added at bottling. Ever wondered what “contains sulfites” means on a label? Now you know. Too little of it creates a healthy environment for faults, but too excessive SO2 makes a wine smell like a spent matchstick. Too much sulfur may also encourage reduction, when hydrogen molecules bind with sulfur to produce hydrogen sulfide, evoking rotten eggs, or in a different reaction, produce mercaptans redolent of burnt rubber and onions.

Brettanomyces (aka “Brett”). The late Brett Summers was the matron of Match Game, but too much of this Brett, and your wine smells like yeasty Band-aids, old saddles, rancid cheese and stained leather.

Other faulty odors include: mousy taint (mouse cage odor); maderized (wine exposed to excessive heat, smells like Madeira); leesy (pungent odor of dead yeast, dew); moldy (odors caused by moldy grapes/barrels); lactic acid (sauerkraut).

FINAL TIPS

Besides mold and other nasty byproducts, a fault is only truly a fault if you don’t like it. For example, some Chardonnays have lovely leesy characteristics, and those used to Old World Bordeaux favor the earthy character of low levels of Brett and do not consider it a fault. And some faults are not faults at all (e.g., mold on top of cork suggests a closer examination, but the lack of foul odor in the cork and wine simply means the cork protected the wine). Lastly, slow down before pronouncing a wine DOA; some of the unwanted tang of sulfur may dissipate with aeration through simple decanting. SP
Phineas and Jason are the authors of “The Modern Gentleman” and “The Modern Lover.” E-mail them at booze@sundaypaper.com.