Wine Defects (Part 2)

Let's close out our current fun discussing everything that is flawed about your bottle of wine with a few more common defects. Some are very well known and some may be new to you.

Reduction 

Essentially, reduction is the opposite of oxidation that we discussed yesterday. Where oxidation occurs when too much oxygen comes in contact with your wine, reduction occurs when not enough oxygen comes in contact with your wine. That's right; it needs some oxygen. 

Now, let's consider which bottles are most likely to not have enough oxygen. Generally speaking, they are the ones where the seal on the bottle does not breathe enough. Regular cork is perfect from that standpoint. While it creates an excellent seal, it does breathe sufficiently to allow just enough oxygen into the bottle. Screw caps and synthetic corks are different. While they are simple, their seals, particularly those of screw caps are succeptible to locking out oxygen entirely and this gives the wine reduction.

How do you know?

You can usually tell from taking a whiff of the just opened bottle. If you get notes of burnt rubber, garlic, or rotten eggs, it's pretty likely that your wine has gotten insufficient oxygen and has gone through a reduction process.

Corked 

Under oxidation, we talked about the benefits of real corks as the sealing medium for a bottle of wine. But, cork is not perfect. In fact, some corks are damaged. And, when they are, your wine could become tainted with 2-4-6 trichloroanizole (TCA) and is said to be corked. 

This should be among the easiest flaws to identify, at least when there is a lot of TCA (it is said that about 6% of bottles have too much TCA, but even most wine geeks can only identify it in between 0.5 and 1.0% of bottles). If you are out and get a bottle that is corked, do not accept it.

How do you know?

The smell will be noticeably bad. Take the cardboard off the back of a pad of paper. Wet it down pretty significantly. Let it sit in your garage for 20 minutes or so. Go take a whiff. That is what TCA smells like. And, as rancid as it smells, it will likely taste about like that too. To me, a great wine is full of life. A bottle that is corked has no life at all.

Goût de Souris 

This is a French term, clearly. It means taste of the mouse. Sounds yummy, huh?

Mousiness is something you can't detect by smelling a wine. Wine scientists think that it occurs most frequently when a wine is not properly preserved. Often, that is from insufficient or no use of sulfites as preservatives in the wine. This is thought to allow lactobacillus, a tiny bacteria to grow in the wine.

So, where does the name come from? Go to a zoo or even a pet shop and go to the rodent section. Yes, I know, that's not for you. Smell the cage. Imagine that smell as part of taste. Got it? That is Goût de Souris.

Bacteria Flaws

Perhaps this fits into some of the other categories, but without this one, I could only come up with 9 defects and I felt like I needed 10. So, there you have it.

All food and wine have some level of bacteria. Some have too much. When this happens, either you get the rodent-like flavor above or you get something perhaps equally unappealing. While it's not a term of art that I have heard in the wine world, I would be inclined to describe this wine as Robitussin-like. Surely, you know Robitussin -- that cough medicine that your parents gave you because they couldn't stand listening to you cough all night. It's not what you want in a bottle of wine, is it?

Cooked Wine

Cooked wine or heat damage is what occurs when your wines are exposed to too much heat for too long. It's a benefit of being kept in a temperature-controlled environment. Your wines will not be exposed to too much heat and will not cook.

How can you tell if your wine is cooked? It has some flavors that just shouldn't occur in wine. Strange nuts, overly jammy, perhaps roasted peanuts. And, because it often causes oxidation, your wine will age too fast and a wine that is at a typical drinking age (vintage 2-3 years ago) will be severely discolored.