Vino, no pain: how to understand what wine is something wrong and how to fix it

You expect raspberry aroma garden, and get the smell of wet cellar? Alas, the wine is "sick." We tell how to fix some of the shortcomings and what you need to know to choose a quality drink.

Andrey Ushakov

Director of the department of marketing of the wine of the project management L-Wine.

Wine - Art. There are a lot of subjective, and the last argument "for" or "against" will always be a "like / dislike". But there are also objective parameters of evaluation of the quality of the noble drink. If you are confused by the smell of wine or an unusual taste, it is quite possible that you got a sample with a defect. There are several life hacking, to help identify defects with the first sip of wine. Tells how to diagnose the bottle and protect yourself from buying a drink spoiled in the future, even if you are new to the wine world.

1. "Cork disease"

symptoms: wine has an unpleasant pungent odor, resembling the smell of wet cardboard or dog hair. If you feel "dog" or "damp cellar" - is not the rich hues of the original complex wine. You do not seemed to ill wine.

What to do

Pour the wine into the sink - alas, it can not be saved. From 1% to 7% of the wine in the world, the sealed cork, infected"Cork taint" responsible compounds. Determination of haloanisoles and halophenols in cork matrix: A review specific "cork" bacteria. Do not want to participate in the lottery - buy wine with a screw cap, there is such a bacteria simply have nowhere to take.

2. Reduction, or "bouquet of hydrogen sulfide"

symptoms: wine smells of boiled cabbage, garlic or rotten egg.

What to do

This case is not hopeless. Such odor appears if the fault is not enough oxygen to allocate and yeast began thiols - organic sulfur compounds. Can improve the smell with the help of aeration - oxygenation of the wine.

Pour the wine into a decanter (this process is called decantation) And give the drink a "breath", while the smell does not evaporate. Not willing to wait a few hours? Stir wine silver spoon or lower in the decanter clean copper coin to the sulfur compound precipitated.

3. The wine is made from unripe grapes

symptoms: The wine smells of cat urine, grass and green peppers.

What to do

The patient is more dead than alive. Unfortunately, if the wine is made from low-quality raw materials, "medicine" is powerless. This usually happens if, for example, weather conditions prevented grapes mature and gain all the necessary qualities, but winemaker still decided to put it into production.

Well-known manufacturers who value the name of the currently not allowed. So choose proven brands of wine in order to avoid this defect.

4. The wine turns into vinegar

symptoms: wine vinegar smell or acetone, nail polish remover.

What to do

Turn water into wine, Jesus could just as well be turned into wine vinegar too much for anyone. Most of what you can expect from such a bottle - the wine used for culinary purposes.

We used to hear that a wine with age becomes only better, but this is true only for the precious complex wines with a lot of storage capacity. Simple inexpensive wines "every day" need to drink, they say, here and now: the white wines are best consumed in the first two years, the red - do not store longer than 3-5 years. So, if you see in the normal chain stores Sauvignon Blanc 2011 for 800 rubles, then leave it on the shelf.

5. "Sunstroke"

symptoms: wine smells of dust and cardboard.

What to do

Easy, but perceptible smell of dust, clogging natural flavors of wine, appears, if a long time kept in bright light, or even in the sun. Drink a wine or not to drink, it's up to you (we would not).

Choosing wine in stores, always pay attention to storage conditions. If the bottles are directly under the lights, or the room is too hot, it is better to look for wine shopping elsewhere.

6. "Heatstroke"

symptoms: wine smells of caramel and roasted fruit, but there is no pronounced taste and aftertaste. The drink has a brownish tint.

What to do

Wine begins to deteriorate at temperatures above 28 ° C. Therefore, if the store does not work in the summer air conditioning or room in winter is fired too hard, the wine there is better not to buy: it is almost certainly suffered from "thermal shock", and have no defects corrected.

7. Oxidase offices or browning of wine

symptoms: wine acquires a brownish tint, and the faint smell of Madeira wine, hazelnuts and rotten apples. Red wine gets dry bitter taste, white vaguely reminiscent of apple cider.

What to do

This defect occurs at the production stage and, unfortunately, can not be adjusted. The skin of rotted or moldy grapes are actively produced by oxidative enzymes - oxidase. If a large number of rotten grapes falls in production, when the wine is ready to come into contact with oxygen, oxidation occurs and drink changes its properties.

8. Secondary fermentation of wine

symptoms: Wine seems unclear, it does have bubbles.

What to do

Bubbles - normal for sparkling wines, in normal quiet wines they should not be. The defect often appears in young red wines, which are bottled with a small amount of residual sugars, and the fermentation process begins again involuntarily. Can not fix it, but the defect is easy to detect: check the bottle in bright light, the bubbles will be visible.