Bad Smells are Just Part of What Can Go Wrong With a Bad Wine Defect

View our previous post – How Wine is Described By Those Snooty People Who Invent Terms Like Terroir

Drinking wine can be a sublime experience when everything comes together for the perfect glass. But what about those less than perfect glasses where the wine is a little flawed or badly flawed? These defects are usually called wine faults and there are lots of different types. Ever smell a wine that reminds you of a wet dog? That’s a wine fault often caused by a tainted wine cork or some other bacteria or unwelcome “guest”. White zin started out as a defective wine where the zinfandel grape juice didn’t fully ferment leaving some of the fruit sugar. Some would claim that it is still a faulty wine…just sayin’. How about a wine that smells like finger nail polish remover…doesn’t that sound appealing? That’s another wine fault caused by a chemical called ethyl acetate. We were tasting last week and a friend smelled a glass of wine and thought it smelled like a dog fart. When our dog farts, he often leaves the room so I’m gonna guess that it wasn’t a compliment.

The point is that wine can have almost as many types of faults as there are types of wine and those faults are caused by a myriad of problems. Flaws in wine generally stem from four main problems:

· poor vineyard management practices
· issues with the wine grapes
· contamination during the fermentation through bottling process
· poor storage conditions.

If the winemaker has successfully navigated these hurdles, there is a good chance that the wine will be good until it gets into your hands. After that, it’s up to you not to screw it up.

Poor Vineyard Management
Starting from the earliest part of the winemaking process, the vineyard itself can cause serious problems. Long before the first wine is ever made, the decision of how and what to plant can condemn a vineyard to mediocrity. It’s a well known adage in the wine industry and we’ve quoted it many times in our blog. You can’t make good wine from bad grapes but you can make bad wine from good grapes. If the vineyard is producing poor quality grapes, the wine will always be flawed. Poor quality wine grapes can stem from planting the wrong type of grape vine for the growing conditions to poor management of the vines themselves. Other causes are over watering, neglect in thinning out the wine grape crop, incorrectly pruning the canopy and cordons (the branches on a grape vine) or over fertilizing. Yes, wine grapes really need to struggle a little to produce good fruit. A happy wine grape vine actually makes pretty bad wine.

Poor Wine Grapes
Assuming the vineyard manager passed winemaking 101 and actually has managed the vineyard correctly, the winemaker enters the picture. Usually it’s the winemaker that decides when and how to harvest the grapes and in order to understand the process, we take a quick detour into basic chemistry. Stop groaning, I promise it will be short. Very young wine grapes are highly acidic meaning they are very tart. As the wine grape matures, the level of acid begins to drop and the sugar level goes up. Close to harvest time, sugar levels in grapes can rise several percent per day. The best wines have a good balance between acid and natural sugar from the fruit. Pick a grape to soon and the wine will be sour due to the preponderance of acid. Wait to long and the acid all but disappears and the grape is left with all sugar and very little acid and produces wines that are called “flabby”. Wait even longer and the grapes begin to dry further and lose moisture, concentrating the sugar and creating a flavor that is often called “stewed”. The best wine grapes retain that balance of fruit and acid.

Contamination
Did you ever hear that old saying, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness?” It’s especially true in winemaking. Contamination can enter the winemaking process anywhere from crush to bottling. At best, contamination merely changes the flavor of the wine but catastrophic contamination can actually kill the yeast that is fermenting the wine, making the entire batch, really bad grape juice. Contamination can come in the form of dirt, chemicals or undesirable living organisms…and no, I’m not talking about your mother-in-law. There are a host of native and non-native yeasts and bacteria just waiting to have their way with the maturing wine and if they violate it, the result is a disaster. One of the most common types of contamination comes from moldy corks, causing the wine to be corked.

Poor Storage Conditions
Aside from storage at the winery and transport, this is where the wine consumer can still screw up even a great bottle of wine. Allowing a cork to dry out, storing wine in an area with large temperature or pressure swings or just keeping it the wrong amount of time all induce faults in wine. Dry corks are usually caused by storing wine upright instead of laying on its side. A dry cork shrinks allowing more air in the bottle and wine to escape due to an imperfect seal resulting in an oxidized wine. Wine temperature and pressure swings result in the same problem as air moves in and out of the bottle prematurely aging the wine. Perhaps the most lamentable is opening a wine too soon or waiting too long to enjoy it. Try opening a Cabernet Sauvignon that was designed to age for 20 years right after it was bottled and I can almost guarantee that it will taste very harsh. On the other hand storing a wine that was made to be enjoyed within a couple of years of vintage for 20 years may give you some great vinegar but the wine will suck.

These are the most common types of wine flaws. It’s a shame that most are preventable but too often, wine abuse (something that I believe should be punishable by a prison term) is a just an act of simple neglect or ignorance.

Winery-Sage is an online Winery Encyclopedia designed to help you compare wines, wineries, and regions by using a unique database. Cross-reference varietals and the wineries that produce them, as well as discover events sponsored by wineries and associations. We’re not here to sell you anything or pass you off to paid advertisers, just share the love for wine. Discover California wines at Winery-Sage.com.

Taste and Smell Are Critical to Describing Wine

How do you describe wine? It’s amazing how many terms people use to describe it. Taste, mouth feel, bouquet, color, palate (really a misnomer because that’s really part of your mouth) clarity, body, aroma, legs (yes legs…we’ll get into that in a bit), never mind a mind boggling array of individual smells that even a bloodhound would have a hard time distinguishing. Most are useful in describing wine to knowledgeable wine folks but some are as pointless as owning a pair sunglasses in England.  Humans have five senses. Are all of them actually useful to describe wine? Let’s take a look at each sense and see if it makes sense (no pun intended) to use it to describe wine.

Touch
Hmm….touch to describe wine? Well, unless wine is a finger food in your house, I’m not seeing it. Admittedly, even soup is a finger food in our house, but dipping your finger into a wine glass to test its quality is a complete waste of time and it will get you really odd looks if you do it in a restaurant.

Sound
Do you hear that? Nope, neither did I. Despite many writer’s attempts to “wax poetic” about wine, it really isn’t a great conversationalist. You’re likely to accumulate dust bunnies in your navel before you hear anything noteworthy from a glass of wine. Now before the smart asses in the audience get overly technical and point out that you can actually hear the bubbles in sparkling wine – I get it. If you hear the bubbles, it is still carbonated. If not, it’s flat. But seriously, did you need to stick your ear next to the glass to figure that out? The little round things rising to the surface weren’t enough of a tip off?

Sight
Now we’re getting somewhere. Sight is usually the first thing that you’ll experience in a glass of wine. The two things to look for are the color of the wine and the clarity of it. Color is useful but only if you know what a specific type of wine is supposed to look like. Let’s take an example. If you don’t even know what a Pinot Noir is supposed to look like, what’s the point in observing the color? Can you tell a good Pinot from a bad one based solely on the color? Few people can. There’s one other visual indicator that was all the rage in the 80’s (you remember the 80s right?…big hair on the girls and mullets on the guys, quiche everywhere and white zinfandel “taking off”.) I wasn’t even into drugs and I still get flashbacks. In wine however, everyone talked about legs. What are legs in wine? Turn a glass of red wine on an angle and gently rotate it several times and then stand it back upright. In the 80’s, if you saw the wine coalescing into several small streams as it flowed back to the bottom of the glass, you’d just observed “legs” in wine. The problem with legs is that it only provides a clue as to the viscosity of the wine, not the quality. Hell, motor oil will leave legs in a wine glass but would you really want to drink it?

If you are going to describe the visual aspects of wine, then color and opacity are the key attributes. Red wines are primarily described as Burgundy (the color came from the wine from Burgundy, France by the way, not the other way around), Ruby, Red or Purple. Several wines, Nebbiolo being the most well known, are actually Brick Red in color. White wine is usually described in shades of Yellow, Gold and Amber. Opacity describes the amount of light that can penetrate a wine.  Usually, the heavier the wine, the less light will pass through it.

Smell and Taste
Now we’re getting somewhere. I love the smell and taste of good wine. It’s completely enticing.  It can be subtle and alluring or brash and bold but even the aromas of huge wines are subtle when compared to most smells though. Perfume, flowers and particularly pungent foods can overwhelm the smell of a wine (garlic anyone?). If you’re going to smell your wine and we always suggest that you do, don’t be coy. You’re not smelling bad Whiskey or Tequila that can burn the retinas out of your eyes if you get too close. Stick your nose right in the glass; the farther the better without actually snorting the wine of course. So what do you smell? Well, if you’re not primarily smelling fruit, spices or something slightly herbaceous you probably have a bad glass of wine.  Those appealing, natural smells that are part and parcel of every glass of wine are what are used to describe the smell.   Do you smell a hint of strawberry?  Then use the word “strawberry” to describe the smell.  Wines are described by drawing an analogy to another smell that is well known to an audience. It’s as simple as that.  Smelling any hint of a chemical, mustiness or mold is a virtual certainty that the wine in question is flawed but it’s OK to use those terms.  I’ve heard the smell of flawed wines described as “dirty socks”, “wet dog”, “barnyard”, “moldy” and a host of equally unappealing aromas that you would not want anywhere near your face.  Unappealing as those terms may be, they are still valid ways of describing wines.  One disclaimer…everyone’s body chemistry is different so an accurate description of a wine for one person may be different for some one else.  One person can pick up different things in wine over different days because even people’s individual body chemistry changes.

So what do you use to describe the taste of wine? Isn’t taste the real reason we drink wine anyway, except maybe that “buzz” that most people like? Not surprisingly, describing taste is usually done using the same terms as describing the smell of a wine and those terms usually include fruit, spices, herbs and smoke for the good and all the other crap for the undesirables.

The experts occasionally make describing wine seem intimidating but it really isn’t that tough because the terms that are used are almost universally known. When all is said and done, there’s no magic language for describing wine. Describe what you smell and taste by comparing it to other things that people recognize and forget the snooty terms that some wine experts use.

Winery-Sage is an online Winery Encyclopedia designed to help you compare wines, wineries, and regions by using a unique database. Cross-reference varietals and the wineries that produce them, as well as discover events sponsored by wineries and associations. We’re not here to sell you anything or pass you off to paid advertisers, just share the love for wine. Discover California wines at Winery-Sage.com.

The Bane of Wine Drinkers – The Broken Cork

How do you open wine when the cork is damaged? Do you just keep churning away with the same corkscrew that caused the problem (or more likely the operator of the corkscrew who really caused the problem)? Do you resort to another tool that might work better? The answer is surprisingly simple if you apply a little common sense.

Before understanding how to remove a damaged cork, it’s probably best to understand a little about corks in general. First, they are more temperamental than a bride’s mother on a wedding day. Corks are made of very soft wood which is why they’re used. Cork can be compressed so that even one slightly larger than the opening of the wine bottle can be squeezed so that it tightly fits the neck of the bottle creating a seal. That’s the good part, but along with that comes a bunch of baggage.

Corks are made out of wood assuming we are not talking about the new synthetic ones that have the bounce of a super ball and the half-life of Uranium. I know it doesn’t feel like wood, but real cork is actually the a layer of bark from the cork tree and just like any other wood, it is subject to drying out. That is why it is so important to store wine laying down. The wine stays in contact with the cork and keeps it moist. Even good cork that has been kept moist will eventually dry over a number of years, usually 10 or more. Dry corks can easily result in the two most common types of problems in opening wine. The first – corks that don’t have enough integrity to hold the worm of the corkscrew which just makes a ever expanding hole in the cork while it is still firmly seated in the bottle. The second – the dreaded broken cork where half of the cork is attached to the corkscrew and the other half is still in the bottle. Oh…and one more point…a cork doesn’t have to be dry to end up broken. It’s easy to break cork if you are not paying attention and bend it while you are trying to take it out.

Let’s assume that your best laid plans didn’t work out and you’ve now damaged the cork so badly, that the wine can’t be opened with a standard corkscrew for fear of drilling all the way through the cork and pushing pieces of it into the wine. Avoid this at all costs. Orange Juice is supposed to have pulp – wine isn’t. Drilling a large hole is great if you are looking for oil – not so much if you are trying to open a wine bottle. It doesn’t matter if the cork is just dry or if you’ve broken it off in the bottle.  Either way, you have a problem.  Once you’ve reconciled yourself to needing an alternative plan to get to your wine, proceed to step one of removing problem corks.

Step One
Hide the evidence if you did it, or if a friend did it, begin copious amounts of verbal abuse immediately. Step one completed? Good – now let’s move to step two.

Step Two
Examine the cork. If the entire length of the cork is still present but you’ve managed to drill a hole in it, the best tool to use is an Ah-So.

The Ah-So is a Great Tool To Open Damaged Wine Corks

Why is it called an Ah-So? I have no idea. The Ah-so has two thin prongs that can be inserted on each side of the cork, between the cork and the bottle. Insert the long prong first and then the shorter one and slowly wiggle the Ah-so from side to side while gently pushing it farther down into the wine bottle along the sides of the cork. If you are doing it right and the cork is cooperating, you should be able to push the Ah-so all the way down until the handle is resting on the top of the wine bottle without pushing the cork further into the bottle. Now slowly turn the Ah-So while gently pulling straight up. Hopefully, as the Ah-So is coming out of the bottle, it is dragging the cork with it. If not, use your thumb and index finger to squeeze the prongs of the Ah-So more tightly against the cork and continue to pull up while turning it slowly. This should work most of the time. If not, go to step three where one of the wine equivalents of power tools come into play.

Step Three
Assuming the cork still won’t come out and you haven’t drilled a hole all the way though it, the next tool to try uses air pressure and a needle. For the power tool aficionados in the audience, I suppose you could call this a pneumatic wine opener but in reality, it’s just a small, glorified bike pump.

Opening Wine with a Wine Air Pump Works Great for Most Damaged Corks

The principal is simple. Insert the needle all the way through the cork and into the bottle of wine and then pump the handle pushing more air into the bottle. As the pressure in the bottle increases, it begins to push the cork out of the bottle. Only pump enough air in so that the cork is out enough to grab it with your hands and finish pulling it straight out. Continuing to pump in more air makes quick work of removing the cork but also does a great job of making a fountain out of your prized wine. Remember where we cautioned against creating a hole all the way through the cork? This tool is why. If the cork has a hole all the way through it, you can’t create more pressure in the bottle to push it out.

Only after these methods have been tried and failed should you consider pushing the cork into the bottle. Remember that if you do this, and there is no hole in or around the cork to relieve the pressure that builds inside the bottle, you’ll create a fountain that looks like the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone. If you think you got abused by your friends for screwing up the cork in the first place, wait until you shoot a couple of glasses of wine out of a bottle, spraying everyone and everything in site. By the way, speaking from personal experience, wine is a pain in the ass to clean off of the ceiling.

If you have to resort to one of these techniques for opening a damaged cork, send us a comment and let us know which method worked best for you.

Winery-Sage is an online Winery Encyclopedia designed to help you compare wines, wineries, and regions by using a unique database. Cross-reference varietals and the wineries that produce them, as well as discover events sponsored by wineries and associations. We’re not here to sell you anything or pass you off to paid advertisers, just share the love for wine. Discover California wines at Winery-Sage.com.

If it is a cork, then you’ll need a corkscrew. All cork screws have several parts in common as illustrated below.

Opening Wine With Different Types of Corkscrews

Check for the Type of Plug – Cork or Screw Top
Most wine has a foil covering the cork.  Don’t screw through the foil because you may not be able to see either a badly degraded or dry cork or perhaps a glass stopper or worse, a screw top. It may be a shock but I’ve seen people not realize that a wine had a screw top and then get frustrated that they couldn’t get the worm to bite. Newsflash…cork screws won’t penetrate a metal or hard plastic screw top so save yourself the embarrassment of trying and failing in front of your friends, which if they are anything like mine, is sure to be accompanied by laughter and pointing. Very few screw caps have foil over them so it should be immediately apparent if it’s a screw top.

Removing the Foil or Wax Seal
Assuming that you’ve ascertained that your bottle doesn’t have a screw top, then you probably have to overcome the next obstacle in your path. This is usually a foil or plastic covering over the cork and part of the neck but it can also be a wax seal and just to complicate the matter further, there are two different types of wax seals. We’ll get to them later. Assuming that you have a foil or plastic seal on your bottle, you need to decide if you want to remove it the fastest way or the best way for presentation. If you are looking for a classic presentation, then you only want to remove the top of the foil. This can be tricky and can result in a severe cut if you’re not careful. Remember that the foil does nothing for the taste of the wine so unless you really want that presentation to be perfect, it’s best to just remove the whole thing (sorry wine purists but it really doesn’t matter and you know it).

If you are looking for that classic presentation though, the best tool is the classic Waiter’s Corkscrew because they almost all have foil knives on them. Using the knife, cut all the way around the foil using the notch between the neck and the finish (the fat part right at the top of the neck).

Removing Foil From Wine Bottle

Angle the knife upwards so that it stays in the notch while you turn the bottle. You will probably need to turn the bottle a couple of times to completely cut through the foil. Remove the top part of the foil once it has been separated from the remaining portion on the neck of the bottle.

The fastest way to open a wine bottle is just to remove the entire foil. Insert the point of the worm or a dull knife underneath the bottom of the foil and make a small tear. It’s a simple matter to continue the tear up to the top of the wine bottle until you can remove the entire foil. However, if you really want this professional presentation then only remove the top of the foil.

Opening a Wax Seal or Plug
There are two types of wax seals, the plug and dip.  The wax plug is just a small layer of wax on top of a cork that has been seated slightly below the top of the bottle. There’s no need to do anything with the wax because the corkscrew will just blow through it like a teenager through a cell phone data plan (if you don’t have a teenager yet, you have something to look forward to…). You just have to hope that the cork is still in good shape because it’s very hard to inspect it. The dipped wax seals are a little more difficult. Some are quite hard.

Wax Bottle Seal – They Can Be Difficult To Ooen

I used to spend a minute or two cursing and fighting with the damn things trying to get enough off to finally get a corkscrew to bite until a winemaker who uses them showed me the trick. Use your hand and rotate the top of the bottle against your palm for 30 – 40 seconds or so.  You don’t need to do it too quickly but you are looking for the friction to warm and soften the wax. Once it’s softened, you should be able to use the knife portion of the opener and scrape away the top portion sufficiently to get the worm to bite.

I know you want to jump to the satisfying “POP” of the wine cork being removed from the bottle…but wait…you need to check the cork first, particularly if the bottle is an older bottle or was not stored properly. If the wine cork looks dry or when you start to work the worm into the bottle, it just fragments or the worm is pulling out of the cork when you try to open it, stop immediately. The cork has been damaged and likely will not be able to be removed by any corkscrew that uses a worm.

Part 2 of this post shows how to remove damaged corks.

Opening the Bottle
Assuming the cork is in good shape, it’s time to use the corkscrew. There are two keys to doing this.
1) Make sure that you are applying enough pressure to the top of the worm so that it actually drills smoothly into the cork. If you apply only light pressure, it will act like an auger and just drill a hole. You should see the worm continue to enter the cork as you turn the corkscrew. If it doesn’t, all you are doing in drilling a hole.
2) Make sure that the worm enters the cork at a straight angle and when you lever it up, it needs to be pried straight up as well. I’ve seen many a waiter insert the corkscrew and then pry the cork up at an angle snapping the cork off in the bottle.

If you still have half of a cork in the bottle you could still use a corkscrew, although the best tool is now a pronged wine opener, commonly called an Ah-so. Check out part 2 of this post to see how to properly use this.

Assuming everything worked well and you have successfully opened your wine bottle quit reading and enjoy your wine! If you have not properly opened the wine bottle, check out section 2, removing problem corks.

Winery-Sage is an online Winery Encyclopedia designed to help you compare wines, wineries, and regions by using a unique database. Cross-reference varietals and the wineries that produce them, as well as discover events sponsored by wineries and associations. We’re not here to sell you anything or pass you off to paid advertisers, just share the love for wine. Discover California wines at Winery-Sage.com.

56 Glasses of Wine. Why Not?  This Is a Salmanazar Next to a Standard Bottle of Wine.

What are the largest wine bottles? They run the gamut from three standard bottles of wine, up to ones seemingly big enough to fill an average sized swimming pool.  By the way, if you’re looking for information on the more standard format wine bottles, please visit part one of this post, which covers single serving bottles through Magnums.

So why make large format wine bottles anyway? Is it a plot by Doctors to expand their hernia repair business? Perhaps the teetotalers of the world think that if wine comes in bottles that are too heavy to lift, people will stop drinking (like that is really gonna stop us). In reality, high quality wines that are capable of aging, age more gracefully in large format bottles because there is very little air in the bottle, relative to the amount of wine. The less air, the less oxidation and the better the aging process. Of course putting wines that aren’t designed to be aged in large bottles is an utter waste of time. Wines without the character to age won’t age well no matter what size bottle they are in. Well made wines from Bordeaux and Burgundy can benefit from this treatment. Large format bottles from Champagne are pretty much just for show.

The first size larger than a magnum, the Marie – Jeanne consists of 3 standard wine bottles or 2.25 liters. It’s only found with Bordeaux style wine bottle shapes.

The Double Magnum not surprisingly, holds the same amount of wine as two Magnums, (come on, I hope you figured that one out from the name) or four standard wine bottles. The double Magnum is the name in Bordeaux. In Burgundy and Champagne, it’s called a Jeroboam which is about to start getting very confusing (trust me, you’ll see why in a minute). These both hold 3 liters of wine.

In Bordeaux, the next size of wine is called a Jeroboam and since 1978, it holds 5 liters of wine. What’s that you say? Didn’t we already have a Jeroboam? Well, the French like to mess with the Americans (in reality these names came about long before there was a national wine consciousness in France so the regions reigned supreme and they really didn’t communicate with each other). Just to confuse the issue further, before 1978, the Jeroboam held 4.5 liters of wine. In Burgundy and Champagne however, the 4.5 liter package is called a Rehoboam. So let’s see if you can follow this now. If you have 4.5 liters of wine you have either a Rehoboam or a Jeroboam but only if it’s a Jeroboam from before 1978, and only from Bordeaux. However, If you have a Jeroboam from Burgundy or Champagne, it will only hold three liters of wine. So a Rehoboam can equal a Jeroboam in volume but it doesn’t have to. To further complicate matters, two Jeroboams also don’t have to equal each other either. To sum it all up, you can have three Jeroboams that hold the same amount of wine or three that hold entirely different amounts of wine. Assuming that you don’t need to take a couple of aspirin for a Jeroboam induced headache, read on…

The next size up holds 6 liters of wine or 8 standard bottles. Now this has the makings of a damn good start to a party! In Bordeaux it’s called an Imperiale and in Burgundy and Champagne, it’s called a Methuselah. In the bible, Methuselah was said to have lived for 969 years but I don’t suggest trying to age any wine that long, no matter what size bottle contains it.

Things at least start to get a little easier after the 6 liter bottle of wine because Bordeaux doesn’t make a wine bottle larger than an Imperiale. Those damn folks from Burgundy and Champage continue to mess with us by having still larger bottles though.

The nine liter or 12 bottle format is called a Salmanazar, presumably named after one of five different kings of the Asserian Empire of the same name. What they have to do with Burgundian wine is beyond me though.

Next up, the Balthazar which holds 12 liters or 16 standard bottles of wine. Balthazar of course, was one of the three wise men or Magi, said to have followed a star to witness the birth of Jesus, although I have to question the wisdom of putting wine in a bottle that is so heavy you need a forklift to pour it.

Last but not least, of the sizes that are actually produced, is the Nebuchadnezzar, named after the Persian King who built the fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylon for his home sick wife…random historical fact by the way.  They didn’t hang people in the gardens. The plants were rumored to look like they hung from the air due to the height of the gardens. This monstrosity holds 15 liters of wine or 20 standard bottles. It’s so damn big, that when it’s empty, you can probably turn it into a hot tub.

There are two other larger format wine bottles but to the best of anyone’s knowledge, much like the Loch Ness Monster, Sasquatch or an honest politician, they’ve never actually been seen. They are the 18 liter, 24 bottle Melchior, and the 25.5 liter, 34 Bottle Sovereign. Is it just me or does it seem ridiculous to make a wine bottle that is big enough hold a third world country? Who the hell comes up with this stuff anyway?

One more thing about large format wine bottles by the way. They seriously screw with wine storage so plan carefully before you buy or you may find that you quickly run out of space as you can see from one of our wine racks.

Very Large Wine Bottle Seriously Screwing With My Wine Storage

About Winery-Sage.com

Winery-Sage is an online Winery Encyclopedia designed to help you compare wines, wineries, and regions by using a unique database. Cross-reference varietals and the wineries that produce them, as well as discover events sponsored by wineries and associations. We’re not here to sell you anything or pass you off to paid advertisers, just share the love for wine. Discover California wines at Winery-Sage.com.

A Wine Carafe Is The Best Tool To Allow Wine To Breathe

Honestly, is anything ever easy? Take wine for instance. Most articles pontificate on the benefits of allowing wine to breath but like everything else regarding wine, letting it breathe is open to debate. Proponents of breathing contend that aerating, another word for breathing, softens the tannins of the wines, while greatly enhancing their flavors and aromas. Critics argue that oxygen begins to destroy wine the minute it comes into contact with it. Needless to say, we have our own opinions as well…this would be a pretty pointless post otherwise.

Does All Wine Need to Breathe?
There is no absolute answer for allowing a wine to breathe. Most red wines that were designed to be aged can benefit from relatively short-term exposure to air, particularly if they are being served on the younger side of maturity. However, if a wine is mature or past maturity, it will probably be damaged by aerating because the tannins have already mellowed.

Hint #1 – Wines that were made to be served immediately upon release don’t usually benefit from breathing. These are typically fruitier wines that lack the tannic structure that benefits from breathing. How do you know if the wine was designed to be served right away? The best way is to ask. Even grocery stores will usually have a beverage buyer or manager that has some familiarity with the wine. You can also look at the web site of the winery or brand to see if they offer serving suggestions. The point is, a little investigation goes a long way. If there is no one knowledgeable about the wine and the web site is useless (unfortunately, a far to common occurrence among winery sites), then revert to hint #2.

Hint #2 – Always taste a wine before assuming that it needs to breathe. If you’re not sure if the wine needs aeration, pour a small amount into a wine glass, taste it, and then gently swirl it in the glass (don’t splash) for 3 to 5 seconds. If the wine tastes fuller and smoother, allow it to breath. You can do this a couple of times to see if it continues to improve. If it is better, then allow the wine to breathe using one of the techniques or gadgets described below. If it has degraded in flavor, recork it and place it where it will be the right serving temperature when you’re ready to enjoy it. Just don’t test it more than a couple of hours before you plan on serving it to avoid long term exposure to air. Because only a small amount of wine was removed from the bottle, the wine shouldn’t degrade any further before you are ready to enjoy it, assuming that you are going to drink it within several hours.

Hint #3 – Very few white wines require any breathing through aeration accessories or decanters.

What is the Best Way for a Glass of Wine to Breathe?
We did a couple of blind taste tests on devices and methods for aerating a single glass of wine. I don’t get paid by the word so there is no reason to retype all of these. The most successful gadget by far was the Vinturi so instead of rehashing all of that, we’ve just linked to it here.

We Found A Vinturi Was The Best Way To Aerate Individual Glasses Of Wine

What is the best way for a bottle of wine to breathe?
Technique #1 – Decant the wine. This is the easiest method. It also has the added benefit of allowing you to remove sediment from the wine if you do it correctly, but that is getting ahead of ourselves and is the topic for the next post in this series. The amount of time to leave a wine in the decanter to breathe depends on the surface area. Assuming the decanter is roughly twice the diameter of the bottle, the wine will aerate in ¼ of the time that it would in the bottle so assume about 20 to 30 minutes. You can also gently swirl it for a few seconds to aid in the aeration.

Technique #2 – For heavier reds, the easiest way to let the wine breathe (not the quickest) is to open the bottle about two hours before serving. There’s a common myth that merely opening a wine bottle and letting it breathe does nothing to enhance its flavor because not enough surface area of the wine is exposed to air. Frankly, we think that’s BS because it doesn’t take into consideration the amount of time the wine will be open prior to tasting. Just like a decanter can speed a wine’s breathing time by increasing the surface area, opening a bottle of wine which has a smaller surface area than a decanter, but letting it breathe for a longer time can improve it. It’s a mathematical function of surface area and time.  Pour out just enough wine to lower the level below the neck of the bottle so there is more surface area exposed to the air.

Technique #3 – If you don’t have a decanter and there isn’t sufficient time to let the bottle breathe, pour the wine into a glass and let it breathe. Typically 20 minutes is sufficient. The problem with breathing wine in a glass is that usually this is done at room temperature. Even well laid plans to serve the wine at the correct temperature usually go out the window if you need to let the wine breathe in the glass, which is usually done at room temperature. We’ll get into wine temperature in part five but serving wine at the wrong temperature is probably the most common mistake that people make. Use this as a last resort unless you have some means of keeping the individual wine glasses at the right temperature.

One last point about allowing an entire bottle of wine to breathe. Once you have done it, you’re committed to either drinking the entire amount decanted or throwing the rest away. Once a wine has been heavily exposed to oxygen, it’s well on the road to becoming vinegar and if left too long, becomes undrinkable. Seriously though. Is throwing yourself on the last glass of wine really such a chore? You may find yourself decanting everything, just so you have an excuse to finish the bottle.

About Winery-Sage.com

Winery-Sage is an online Winery Encyclopedia designed to help you compare wines, wineries, and regions by using a unique database. Cross-reference varietals and the wineries that produce them, as well as discover events sponsored by wineries and associations. We’re not here to sell you anything or pass you off to paid advertisers, just share the love for wine. Discover California wines at Winery-Sage.com.

Wine Bottles of Various Sizes – The “Quality” of the Split In This Picture Will Tell You All You Need To Know About Buying Them

What size bottles does wine come in? Do the different sizes make a difference in how the wine tastes? That’s a complicated answer. First, there are a number of misconceptions about what different sized wine bottles are actually called and second, once you get into the bigger bottles, there are different names for bottles that hold the same amount depending on where they are from. Sound confusing? Just wait. This plot has more twists than an Agatha Christie novel. Part one of this post pertains to the more standard size bottles – those that you are likely to see in your every day travels. Part two gets into large format wine bottles.

187 ml or roughly 1/4 of a standard wine bottle
This is the smallest standard form factor. It’s about the size of your fingernail and holds just enough so that if you inhale at the wrong time, you may just breathe in your wine instead of actually drinking it. They are kind of the equivalent of those “fun size” candy bars that you used to get as a kid on Halloween. You know the ones I’m talking about. They’re barely a bite so you had to eat five or six of them to equal one of the real size candy bars. Never mind the fact that you need a magnifying glass to actually see them. Technically, these bottles hold 187 ml and they are called a Split or occasionally a Piccolo but some people incorrectly refer to them as a single. I refer to them as “nuisance” and other than being convenient for travel, they are an utter waste of time. They are generally mass produced so it’s extremely rare to get a good quality wine in one. Also, the small form factor wines usually have a higher percentage of oxygen to wine in the bottle so are prone to oxidizing far more quickly.

375 ml Half or Demi
The next smallest size, called a Demi or occasionally a Half, contains half of a standard bottle of wine or 375ml. These are often, incorrectly called a Split which is actually one of the names for the bottle that is one half this size and was mentioned above.  However, just as with the nuisance bottle mentioned above, wines in this size bottle can oxidize more quickly. The bottles are often used to hold sparkling, dessert or fortified wines where smaller servings are in order due to the strength or sweetness of the wine. The smaller wine bottle allows the drinker to finish the bottle without having to recork the wine and run the risk of it spoiling.

750 ml or Standard Bottle
What’s next? The old standby and the form that the vast majority of wines are sold in, the 750ml or Standard bottle. This is the one that you see lined up on store shelves, wine racks and restaurant displays and while it looks considerably bigger, it really only holds slightly more than the equivalent of two 12 ounce cans of soda. See…now you don’t feel so bad drinking that bottle by yourself. 26 ounces of water, soda or beer is easy to polish off. Why should wine be any different? Assuming the winemaker conforms to international guidelines, the Standard wine bottle always holds 750ml irrespective of its shape. By the way…the biggest misconception about this size wine bottles has to do with the “punt”, that thing in the bottom of the bottle that sticks up into the wine that makes it look like the winemaker is trying to cheat you out of your wine. No matter how big the punt is, the bottle will still hold 750ml (check the label if you don’t trust me). Wine bottles always show how much volume is in them.

Magnum
The last of the more common wine bottle sizes is the magnum. The magnum holds twice the amount of wine than a Standard bottle and while not as frequently seen as the 750ml bottle, it can be found in most wine stores. Why would a wine maker produce a wine bottle that is bigger than the standard? There’s actually two reasons, one for quality wine and one for the really cheap ass stuff. Wine bottled in a magnum that is well made and is designed to age has less air in it per volume of wine than a Standard bottle. Less air means slower oxidization and a better aging process, particularly for wines that are meant to be aged for a long period of time. Of course magnums tend to reek havoc with a well planned wine storage system so be careful before investing in a bunch of them or you may find that you have no place to put them. The other reason to bottle in a magnum is for what are euphemistically called “economy” wines….aka…Crap…Rotgut….Swill or a Future Hangover. Bottling wine in a single bottle is more economical. It uses less glass, only requires a single cork and label, all of which cost money. It’s also a more efficient use of space, and freight is a major component in the price of wine.

So there you have it – part of our wine bottle size post. Check out part two to see the more unusual wine bottle sizes.

About Winery-Sage.com

Winery-Sage is an online Winery Encyclopedia designed to help you compare wines, wineries, and regions by using a unique database. Cross-reference varietals and the wineries that produce them, as well as discover events sponsored by wineries and associations. We’re not here to sell you anything or pass you off to paid advertisers, just share the love for wine. Discover California wines at Winery-Sage.com.

So Much Good Wine…So Little Time

Do you want to find good wine values? It comes down to knowing a few tricks. There are lots of good values out there if you know how to find them. We’ve detailed some of the easier ones below.

Consult With Someone Knowledgeable
It’s really not rocket science. Find someone who’s opinion you respect and ask their advice. This really is the easiest way to find great wine at great prices. Many higher end liquor stores and specialty stores have dedicated wine buyers. By describing the types of wine that you like, they can quickly recommend several to try. Most are thrilled to help because it gets them out of the dusty back rooms and allows them to talk to someone who wants to know about wine. They’ll eventually learn your tastes and the reward can be some really good wines at very reasonable prices. If you develop a really good relationship, they’ll even call you when a real find comes in so you can stake your claim before it’s set out for the great unwashed masses.

Look for the Store’s Wine Buyer’s Comments
Assuming you are shy and don’t want to ask to talk to a wine buyer (I can’t understand that one by the way – I’m about as subtle as a fart in church) then find a store where the local buyer puts recommendations near the wine. You’ll be surprised how many stores have the wine buyers comments. Buy a single bottle of each one that sounds intriguing. If you like any of them, then go back a pick up more.

Join A Winery’s Wine Club
Most wineries offer specials to their members. It usually costs nothing to join a winery’s club and you only need to buy two or three bottles a quarter and they are usually at a discounted price. One of our local wineries has the best deal going. You can barrel taste wines before the wines are released and then buy them by the case for 50% off. For years, we’ve picked up exceptional cases of wine that are normally $30 per bottle for just $15. Of course the down side is that you have to wait for a couple of months to pick them up and then have the patience to set them down for a year or two – great for finding deal – not great if you are into instant gratification.  The fun part though is that every few months, you can pop open a bottle and see how the wine is maturing.

By the way, I am somewhat dubious of the wine clubs that offer wines from different regions and different wineries. Most of these are in it for the money (they are a business after all) and there is rarely anything really special about the wines that they are pushing. It’s safest to stay with a wine club that has a vested interest in making sure that you enjoy their wines.

Go Wine Tasting In Up And Coming Regions
Usually the more obscure a wine region, the cheaper the wines will be. Don’t let a lack of notoriety bias your opinion. Many of the best wine regions are yet to be discovered by the masses. Remember that the more popular a winery or wine region becomes, the more expensive it is likely to be.

Look at the Wine Ratings
I put this one down although with some trepidation. There are lots of people using a “100 point wine rating system” but they are often quite arbitrary. One person’s 93 is another’s 87 and that’s the problem. Even individual wine raters have been fooled and given wine from the same bottle and scored it differently in the same tasting. Of course it is likely that a wine in the 90’s is going to be better than wine rated in the 70’s, it still might not be to your taste and that is the problem with rating scales. By the way, has any one ever seen a wine rated in the 60’s or 70’s? I haven’t although I tend to avoid wine ratings the way that a teenager avoids homework. If all the wines are in the low 80’s to the high 90’s, what’s the point in having a 100 point scale?

Another problem (trust me, there are more than just these two) is that most of the 100 point scales embrace the big, bold extracted, in your face wines that were so favored by Robert Parker, the creator of the 100 point system. That’s great if those are the only types of wine you want.  However, if you want something a little more subtle, odds are that it won’t rate as highly.

There you have it. Five ways to find great wine values. There are many more so we invite our readers to share others in the comments section.

About Winery-Sage.com

Winery-Sage is an online Winery Encyclopedia designed to help you compare wines, wineries, and regions by using a unique database. Cross-reference varietals and the wineries that produce them, as well as discover events sponsored by wineries and associations. We’re not here to sell you anything or pass you off to paid advertisers, just share the love for wine. Discover California wines at Winery-Sage.com.

How Much To Spend On A Bottle of Wine?

How much should you spend on a bottle of wine? Spending a lot of money on a wine doesn’t mean it is a good wine. I’ve had some pretty mediocre bottles that were $40 or more and I’ve had some really good ones that were less than $10. Price doesn’t equal quality although you are more likely to get a good bottle if you spend more. Unfortunately, the answer is never as simple as we would like but if you adhere to the couple of points below, you stand a good chance to get the most out of your wine and that is critical before even asking how much to spend on a bottle of wine. Why spend $50 on a bottle if you are going to turn it into a $20 bottle by serving it incorrectly?

1) Serve your wine correctly to get the most out of it. Click here to visit our pages on storing and serving wine correctly. Even good bottles of wine can be ruined by poor serving practices.

2) Store your wine correctly or even a prized bottle might end up tasting like vinegar. If you have questions on how best to store wine, we’ve provided some guidelines.

3) Never spend more than you can afford. Is this a critical ingredient for ensuring you have a good wine? No…of course not. Is it one for ensuring that you have enough money to eat for the next week or so you don’t stress yourself into a heart attack? Yep. Wine is great but basic common sense should dictate how much you spend.

So assuming that you have not screwed up your wine by violating one of the points mentioned above, we’re still back to the same question. How much should you spend for a bottle of wine? First, answer this question. Are you buying wine to enjoy right away or are you buying it to lay down and store so that it improves with age?

If you are buying wine to drink immediately, you’re in luck. These are usually cheaper than wines that are designed to improve with age. Just don’t expect them to get any better as they sit. Most of these types of wines are designed to be drunk when they are released. Aging them is pointless unless you are trying to make vinegar.

If you are buying wines to sit down and age, you’ll probably have to spend more because wines designed to age usually involve more expensive grapes, longer storage in barrels and costlier bottling and corking processes. Buying younger wines that are designed to be aged is a great way to get great wine at a lesser cost. Someone has to pay for the storage of age worthy wines. If the winery does it, it will cost a lot more than if you do it yourself. If you store it, it’s kind of like “sweat equity” in a remodel process. If you are willing to invest your own time and space, you can save money.

The Golden Rule Of Wine Quality
Well…in reality it’s probably more of a “Fool’s Gold Rule”. Call it what you will. We think it generally works pretty well. The price of the wine goes up exponentially while the quality only goes up linearly. Uh…say what? Ok for those of us who aren’t math nerds, let’s try it this way. The price of wine goes up a hell of a lot faster than the quality of it. Karen and I find that if we want a wine that is twice as good as another one, we need to spend twice as much. Ok..so far so good. That’s not rocket science but if we want a bottle that is even better, we now need to spend twice as much as that new number or four times as much as the original wine.

Wine Cost vs Quality

The Fools Gold Rule in Practice For Those of Us Without Math Majors
Let’s take a drinkable Cabernet Sauvignon for example. If you’re happy with an $8 bottle but want to know how much to spend for one that is twice as good, you probably need to spend about $16. Looking for one that is twice as good as that $16 bottle? You probably now need to spend about $32. Hmmm…you like that $32 bottle but are you looking for more in a bottle? It looks like there is a $64 expenditure in you future. If you are looking for wine about two steps up (whatever that may mean to you), you’ll need to spend about four times as much. Is this rule concrete? Of course not. Quality and taste are subjective but the general pattern holds.

That’s the general rule for cost vs. quality. Check out part two of this post for tips on how to find good wines and fair prices.

About Winery-Sage.com

Winery-Sage is an online Winery Encyclopedia designed to help you compare wines, wineries, and regions by using a unique database. Cross-reference varietals and the wineries that produce them, as well as discover events sponsored by wineries and associations. We’re not here to sell you anything or pass you off to paid advertisers, just share the love for wine. Discover California wines at Winery-Sage.com.

Aged Wine In A Wine Cellar

Some things get better with age and some don’t.  Classic paintings – check.  Fossils – yep.  My wife – you bet (and I didn’t just put that in because I need to sleep some time and she knows where all the sharp knives are kept in the kitchen).  Cottage cheese – not so much.  Spoiled children – are you kidding me?  I’ve been next to too many on airline flights.  How about wine?  Well…that isn’t a simple answer.

So how long should wine age?  It’s one of the most frequently asked questions about wine.  Every Varietal has different needs when it comes to aging.  Some like Beaujolais Nouveau should be enjoyed within months of harvest.  Others like the most robust Cabernet Sauvignons can lay down for decades and continue to improve.  Generally what allows a wine to age gracefully and improve are the combinations of tannins and acids.  Wine with both, will generally improve with age.  Wines with little of either, should almost always be consumed soon after release.

Most retail wine produced and sold in California is designed to be drunk directly off the shelf.  By the way…random thought…anyone notice that one of the correct past tenses “drink” is “drunk” even though most people don’t use it that way.  Come on people…it’s a natural…everyone embrace the “drunk”.   Yeah…I know I digress…we return you back to your regularly scheduled blog post.   However, many wineries produce vintages that have the characteristics to be “cellared” so they will improve with age. Aging a wine that wasn’t designed to be aged works about as well as trying to age mayonnaise on a hot summer day. Drinking a wine too early, that was designed to be aged, is a waste of your investment because age-worthy wines are usually more expensive and don’t come into their own for a number of years.  Lesson number one – age wines that are meant to be aged and drink wines that were made to enjoyed right away.  So, assuming you’ve realized that you have a wine worthy of aging, it’s key to age it in the right conditions.

Temperature
When storing wine, the ideal temperature range is 57 – 60 degrees.  This reflects the normal cellar/basement temperature where wines were traditionally stored in wineries and homes.  If that’s not available, find a place in your home where the temperature stays as consistent as possible;  often a basement, back room or even a crawlspace.  Wine that was designed to be laid down can age gracefully even at 68 degrees as long as the temperature remains consistent.  It likely they won’t improve the way it would have at a lower temperature, but for a casual wine drinker, the differences shouldn’t be too great as long as it’s enjoyed on the younger side of mature, rather than waiting for it to reach full maturity as it would have at cellar temperature.  Temperature stability is much more important than lower temperatures.

Pressure
If there is a yin and yang of wine storage, it is temperature and pressure.  Large temperature swings create pressure differences between the air in the bottle and the outside air.  As the temperature outside cools below the temperature of the bottle, the warmer air in the bottle is at a higher pressure and will try to force its way out of the bottle.  As the wine storage temperature warms beyond the temperature of the bottle, it usually has a higher pressure which pushes air back into the bottle.  Even well sealed bottles are subject to this movement and after several years, the daily intake and outflow of air will begin to oxidize the wine.

Light
It is critical to avoid any strong sources of light.  Any source of light is harmful to wine whether it be sunlight, incandescent, fluorescent or LED.  Sunlight is the worst though, because it shines in so many spectrums.  Light of any kind reacts adversely with the phenolic compounds in the wine and degrades it.  The stronger the light, the worse the reaction.  You can tell if wine has been subjected to light damage because it will have a slightly skunky smell, mildly reminiscent of a teenager’s sweat socks that have been percolating in a gym bag, next to a dead skunk in the neighborhood of an overflowing septic tank on a hot summer day.

Type of Wine
The most important of all factors is the wine itself.  Some Varietals are age-worthy and some are not.  Cabernet Sauvignons age well but only if they were meant to be aged.  Dolcetto should be drunk within a couple of years of its vintage.  Refer to the individual Varietal pages on our reference site to get hints on how long a wine can be stored after purchase.  If you have the opportunity, consult with the winemaker, who always has the best idea of how the wine will improve with age.  And most important, don’t by a cheap-ass bottle of Cabernet from the store and sit on it for years with the expectation that it will improve.  You’ll end up with really bad vinegar, not really good wine.

Winery-Sage is an online Winery Encyclopedia designed to help you compare wines, wineries, and regions by using a unique database. Cross-reference varietals and the wineries that produce them, as well as discover events sponsored by wineries and associations. We’re not here to sell you anything or pass you off to paid advertisers, just share the love for wine. Discover California wines at Winery-Sage.com.