Spot that wine fault!!!

A beautiful evening awaits, with a wonderful dinner presented, together with an important person you've always wanted to spend your time with. Oh, what a night of romance and perfection. You surely wouldn't want to see anything go wrong. Dinner starts with your ordering of the mouth-watering dishes and of course some wine to go with. Order's taken Sir and here comes that elegant wine bottle, and in it is what u've probably been looking forward to with so much anticipation as you long for some allowance and space to drift and indulge your soul in. You are then approached by the sommelier, whom might have triggered some intimidating effects upon you. As the wine is poured and presented before you, you take over politely and take a sip and hurry through the process of wine tasting. Never mind about the exact technicalities and precision that you might have missed out when tasting that wine you've ordered and will pay for, though the whole process should be taken with much effort and care. But what's the worst thing that can happen and I believe is actually happening for many people out there is this. You are served a faulty wine in a restaurant, and in your fear for any embarassment, you decide to just convince your tastebuds that this is just a new creation that doesn't taste that good and that you will not order it the next time round. And then for the rest of the night, you torture not just your tastebuds but also that beautiful partner beside you. Sounds sad doesn't it? While lets learn a little about faulty wines and forbid such disaster to ever happen shall we?


Well, not just in restaurants, but if u are actually shopping in a wine shop and it turns out to be faulty, do not hesitate or feel bad about having to ask for a new bottle as the restaurant or the merchant will be able to get themselves reimbursement from the winemakers or importers. And you know the beautiful thing is that when u do that, you're actually contributing much to helping the winemaker to monitor any faulty wines and try to eliminate the problem!


Alright after some effort to convince you that asking for an exchange is not that bad or embarassing a thing, let's go into some pointers that you can look out for in faulty wines. Apart from the 2 naturally occurring substances, this being the sediments in red wines and tartrate crystals in whites, which actually are indicators of confident winemaking and are actually positively attractive, anything else is likely to be questionable. A permanent haze or cloudiness in the wine probably means that there's a bacterial problem in the wine, with yeast usually still present. And while it will not necessarily cause you harm, but it is indeed a genuine fault and is surely not how the winemaker has intended it to be brought before you. So bring it back right now and "savour" it no more. As for bubbles in still wine , it may or may not be a problem. A little squirt of carbon dioxide may be given in whites to give them a lift to aid them in retaining the freshness of the style. These spritz will disappear shortly after serving and need not be much of a concern. However, still wines might at times be unintentionally bottled with yeast still active in the wine and this will then cause that "still wine" to be actively fizzy! This is surely the time to raise your concern as this is not about treating the frizzy wine as Champagne but rather you know this is more about drinking wine with unwanted fermentation should you decide to just go ahead with it. *yucks*


Nosing can be a great way to help detect faults as well. Any vinegary or strong sulphur smells can be off putting and point to bacteriological or winemaking cockups. You should also look out for sherry-like smell which can indicate oxidation, or even mouldy smells that could indicate dirty wooden barrels, bacterial spoilage or just plain unhygienic winemaking. However, at times some wines might not be obviously faulty but are just having some bottle stink . These wine just need some time allowance to breathe, or better still, to decant in order to give these slightly musty wine a much needed kiss of life. Lastly, a corked wine is a result of a contaminated cork affecting the taste of wine and this problem is usually not reversible. So an easy way to prevent this would be to go for screwcaps and woooo~ you get rid of that corky problem out from your wine.


So in a nut shell, while the pointers mentioned here are definitely not exhaustive, I hope it did helped you understand that not all wines are perfect and well. It definitely isn't an embarassing thing to point out a faulty wine. Besides, what's a few words as compared to a session of real tasty wine indulgence. *cheers*


P.S The above information and content is gathered from the following:
- "The Wine Book - change the way you think about wine" by Matthew Jukes
- Picture taken from http://wines.asuccessformula.com/
- For more information on the wine tasting process in particular, kindly visit my prvious post http://winelov3r.blogspot.com/2007/09/learn-to-understand-its-inner-hidden.html