Here’s Some More Wine Faults to be Aware of…
Think of it a bit like this. You pass on your prized Bolognese recipe to a friend because they want to really impress a hot date. Everything is going great guns until they come to the seasoning. The recipe asks for between ½ – 1 tsp (teaspoon) salt according to taste. In their haste, your friend interprets ‘tsp’ as tablespoon and adds accordingly. Now unless you have a particular liking or high threshold for salty food, that sauce isn’t going to impress!
Using the correct quantity of salt will enhance the flavour perfectly without leaving the overpowering salty taste. In this example, salt is both an enhancer and a spoiler.
The bottom line is, you have to know what you’re doing and work diligently with an eye for detail. The same mantra applies in winemaking and the controlled exposure of wine to oxygen.
How winemakers use oxygen to positive effect
I’ve been fortunate to visit many wineries, large and small, around the world. Two producers, in particular, stand out for highlighting the important role that oxygen plays in their wines.
The first producer used oxygen to help shape the organoleptic elements, that is the smell and taste.
The second highlighted the effect on the wine’s stability, i.e. its longevity once the bottle had been opened.
Scenario 1 (Micro-oxygenation)
In 2001, I was taken on a sales and buying trip that traversed north Italy and ended in Collio (Friuli). We visited the legendary white wine domain of Mario Schiopetto.
Mario is credited with kick-starting Italy’s quality white wine movement back in the mid-1960s. He was a true innovator and embraced technology as much as he respected and practised low-impact winemaking.
Mario’s daughter, Maria Angela, was excited to talk us through their, then, pioneering micro-oxygenation technology. It had been integrated into their immaculate, stainless steel tanks.
Stainless steel tanks are obviously non-porous, unlike oak and even concrete, so it makes it much more challenging for producers that want the benefits that micro-oxygenation offers.
By passing a controlled amount of oxygen through their white wines during fermentation, the wines are given yet another dimension.
This interaction with oxygen gives the wines even greater perfume intensity in their youth. It also amplifies the flavour components in the mouth building great depth. Tasting through their range was a truly humbling and unforgettable experience.
Scenario 2 (Oxidative winemaking)
Wind the clocks forward to March 2019.
While working for Alliance Wine, I was invited to assist with vintage on their own production projects in South Australia.
The old vine Grenache project under the Thistledown banner interested me most as these wines have gained widespread critical acclaim.
My mentor, Giles Cooke MW, is another staunch advocate of low intervention winemaking. He does as little ‘meddling or manipulation’ as possible in the cellar, contrary to the big firms.
He treats Grenache as if it were Pinot Noir, so there’s a decent proportion of whole bunches in the ferment. There’s also a high degree of open-topped fermentation, as well as regular hand-plunging.
Open-top fermentation allows lots of contact with oxygen, but the wine doesn’t oxidise due to the regular movement of the grapes. Regular hand plunging of the grape solids under the juice’s surface may be labour intensive, but it certainly pays off.
Not all wines deteriorate fast once opened
When I got back to the UK, I started presenting some of the wines at customer tastings. I ended up with one or two bottles left over and promptly forgot about them. A fortnight later, I was pulling some samples for another event and found one of the Grenache samples. It was minus a quarter of the liquid with its screw cap firmly in place.
Thinking that it must be oxidised, I was about to tip it down the sink when I decided to humour myself and taste it. To my sheer amazement, far from being oxidised, the wine had barely changed at all. It’s vibrancy and silky fruit was still very much intact. No prizes for guessing what I drank that evening!
This was a valuable lesson in why you should never make assumptions. I should, however, point out that this is not typical and is only likely to apply to other similarly made wines.
Worth noting that dessert wines are largely resistant to oxidisation due to their high residual sugar levels.
Oxygen’s negative effects on wine
Everyone will have experienced an oxidised wine at some time or another.
Open a bottle of wine, drink some, then close it up and come back to it a few days later. What do you notice? The wine has probably lost some of its freshness and may even taste a bit sour or bitter. If left for even longer, the effects become even more obvious.
Some rosé and red wines might even show an orange tinge around the edge of the wine glass.
Leave the wine for maybe a week or two and it’ll start to smell and taste more like sherry. This is the effect that oxygen has on wine over time.
Very occasionally, you’ll find these characters as soon as you open a fresh bottle. This tells you that the closure is faulty whether it’s under natural cork or screw cap.
Should this wine smell like vinegar?
If the wine smells of vinegar or even nail polish, it means there’s an excessive presence of ‘volatile acidity’.
VA is a natural bi-product of winemaking and usually exists at low levels, so it remains undetectable. But high levels indicate that bacteria have reacted with the oxygen in the wine and created acetic acid.
Now the wine’s only fit for salad dressing, putting on your French fries or cleaning the bathroom!
To read more about wine faults, check out ‘Excuse me, I’m afraid this is corked’.
