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<\/a><\/p>\nPhoto courtesy of Sentara Healthcare.<\/em><\/p>\nWhen it happens in a tasting room, it\u2019s fairly important to recognize the flaw in what you\u2019re tasting and report it to the server or the tasting room manager.\u00a0 They want to know if there\u2019s a problem and prevent shipment of wines that are simply bad.\u00a0 Each of the following instances has happened to us at one time or another although, as we say, it\u2019s been rare.<\/p>\n
\n- Brett<\/strong> This taint is caused by the presence of a yeast called Brettanomyces, or brett for short. It is a bit difficult to discuss, for two reasons. \u00a0The first is that brett is only described in euphemisms, most often as \u201cbarnyard smell\u201d.\u00a0 It\u2019s easy to get the point: Brett makes wine smell and taste really bad.\u00a0 But the other difficulty is that some people (including winemakers) actually like a little bit of that smell.\u00a0 And who\u2019s to say much is \u201ca little bit\u201d?\u00a0 Brett seems more prevalent in Pinot Noir, especially French Burgundies and is much sought after by some connoisseurs.\u00a0 But if brett shows up in your glass and it\u2019s clearly too much, mention it to your server, but be prepared to be told, \u201cIt\u2019s supposed to taste that way.\u201d<\/li>\n
- Corked wine<\/strong> Winemakers are not responsible for corked wine, but cork manufacturers are. There are some fungi in cork trees which may appear when the bark of trees is turned into bottle closures.\u00a0 It\u2019s a chemical called TCA (2,4,6 \u2013 trichloroanisole) or simply TCA.\u00a0 Once in contact with the wine, it imparts an aroma and taste that is often described as wet cardboard.\u00a0 Once corked, the wine cannot recover, no matter how long it\u2019s aged or left to air out.\u00a0 We were once at a renowned winery that is famous for their attention to the science involved in winemaking.\u00a0 After a tour, we were served in a pleasant tasting room.\u00a0 And to our dismay, the first Chardonnay served was corked.\u00a0 We immediately told the server, who was abashed to be sure and she quickly took the cork.\u00a0 The manufacturer and batch were identified on it. \u00a0She took it to the lab people in the back so they could eliminate those corks from future production. That\u2019s why servers should smell the wine before pouring from a new bottle, avoiding serving corked wine to visitors.\u00a0 This one did not.<\/li>\n
- Wine fault <\/strong>There are some cases in which a wine has an off taste, such as rotten eggs, discarded motor oil or swamp. In our experience, this problem occurs rarely, most often following a below average harvest.\u00a0 Some winemakers, rather than accepting the fact that they won\u2019t get good wine that year, play with it, adding chemicals and using techniques to \u201cboost\u2019 the wine.\u00a0 In a few cases, all that effort just makes a poor wine into a bad one.\u00a0 We well remember tasting the poor 2011 vintage<\/a> at one of Napa Valley\u2019s most famous wineries.\u00a0 One of the wines tasted\u2026rotten.\u00a0 Our server told us that the wine was still young and would improve with age.\u00a0 We tried using a Clef du Vin<\/a> to see if age would make a difference, but it didn\u2019t.\u00a0 We have since been back to that winery, but we\u2019re always on our guard when we taste there.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When you go wine tasting, you don\u2019t expect to like everything you try.\u00a0 In most cases, that\u2019s simply a matter of taste.\u00a0 No winery is capable of appealing to everyone and no visitor is required to like everything he or she samples.\u00a0 But here we\u2019re not talking about a wine you just don\u2019t enjoy.\u00a0 It … Continue reading Recognizing Bad Wine<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1558,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556\/revisions\/1558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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