An experience recently changed the way I look at wine -- and especially how others view it.
I pulled the natural cork to open a bottle of wine and poured a glass. Instantly I knew that it had been ruined by cork taint. The cork had been infected with a chemical called TCA that I occasionally see when natural corks are used to seal wine bottles.
Without getting too technical, TCA imparts a moldy smell to bottled wines and it’s noticeable to most professionals at concentrations as low as 3 parts per trillion. I’ve tried many wines that had far more than that amount, making the wine awful to me and professional winemakers, wine competition judges, and retail wine shop owners.
The phrase “it’s corked” usually means no one will enjoy it.
The bottle that changed my outlook on this was a wine that wasn’t strongly corked. The TCA level wasn’t high at all. In fact, I was the only one of seven people at the table who detected it. I said nothing about it and noticed that others were enjoying it. I could not.
After a few minutes, however, my oldest son (all three had been steeped in wine culture since they were infants) said he thought something might be wrong with this bottle. I asked him what he thought it was. He just said, “It doesn’t seem right.”
I whispered that I believed it was slightly corked. whereupon he smelled the wine again, nodded, and said, “Corked. Yeah.”
What made the episode so interesting was that no one else at the table had the slightest problem with it. I then realized that the more we know about the flaws that can exist in wine, the more we become ultracritical about everything that we smell and taste, which makes some people see the flaw-finders as cantankerous.
It’s much the same way with coffee, bread, and a host of other foods about which we know a lot more. Some people don’t care about the quality of the foods they get in a cafe, but others resist mediocrity when they believe they know enough so.
But wine is obscure for most; few people are knowledgeable enough to reject mediocrity just because they don’t like something. Often, it’s because they fear that those in authority will fight back.
I’ve been writing about wine since 1976. So, I have seen just about every flaw known to the industry, and at concentration levels so small that some in-the-industry types ignore them. Among the flaws I once saw was acetaldehyde, a smell I'll never forget. I haven’t encountered it in decades.
A more common problem is what winemakers say is volatility, which isn’t unlike nail polish remover (acetone?). Some high-alcohol zinfandels seem prone to tiny amounts of volatility. At low concentrations it can be attractive. Some winemakers say it’s a flaw at any concentration.
Similarly, some wines that were not opened early enough in their lives can display oxidative aromas and tastes that will be off-putting to experts. But the same flawed wine may be fine for newcomers or the uninitiated.
The good news is that wines with noticeable flaws are almost nonexistent today, especially when the wines are made by large wineries that put into place safeguards to make sure the wines are sound.
Moreover, cork producers have worked diligently to eliminate cork taint. It’s hard to find this trait as often as we did 20 years ago.
There is, however, a new category of wine in which slight flaws are more common and can pose problems. Called “natural” wines, many of these products are fascinating and made to appeal to those who don’t mind aromatics and flavors that might otherwise be termed rustic or gutsy.
It’s difficult to explain most of the strange characteristics I see in natural wines, usually because the extraneous elements really range from A to Z. Nor is every odd characteristic widely accepted as a flaw; some are just unusual.
Since flaws are so rare these days, I hope consumers learn more about them before rejecting wines just because they don’t like them.
Wine of the Week: 2021 Foppiano 1896 Red Blend, California ($18) -- Made from five red wine grapes and aged in barrels to soften its tannins, this handsome, soft red wine has an aroma of plums, blackberries and coffee and isn’t very tannic or tart. Often seen at $13 or less.
