Wine is an acquired taste. The more one tastes, the more one acquires. Unlike wine snobbery, where the more one acquires, the more one supposedly tastes! An eminent winemaker constantly preached that it is better to try and learn about wine armed with a corkscrew rather than a vintage chart. And with sound reason too, for all those who wonder how those big heads (or is it big noses) in the world of wines tell one grape from another, or guess at the wine?s vintages, the answer is simple. Well, it?s all about practice and training the relevant senses.
Appearance faults
The easiest to spot, they include deposits (suspended or settled) in the bottle. Such crystalline formations may, or may not be detrimental to wine quality. With extremely old wines I would feel let down to not find any deposits whatsoever. They aren?t harmful really, but leave behind a muddy mouth-feel, which kills sensations associated with older vintages. An old bottle is best stood upright for an hour, more if possible, to help settle the sediments and then, in one swift go, decanted into a clean decanter. The decanter should not have a broad mouth, as contact with oxygen would hasten the wine?s final moments. Sometimes, extreme brown tinges in whites, or very pale amber-orange core in reds is a clear indication that the wine is well beyond its prime and unfortunately, beyond enjoyment.
Other visual faults, (for example, emulsion break-up) thanks to vast improvements in wine making techniques, are near extinct and hard to come across. A small note, though. There exists something called an ?unfiltered wine?. They always appear a bit cloudy, but that is the way they are intended to be. By filtering wines through a broad-gauge sieve, the vintner retains more flavouring constituents in the wine. Personally, I think it is an excellent concept and the wines come out beautifully.
Olfactory faults
The trickiest of the lot border on what I term ?personal degrees of acceptance?. A wine too earthy in character would leave one at the longer end of a question mark wondering whether the wine is a bit off, or is that exactly how the wine maker wanted it? Sometimes too much oak/ butter/ banana/ yeast/ asparagus are disturbing and the wine may not be pleasurable.
Contrarily, a hydrocarbon (petrol) note in Riesling wines is most sought after! It is rightly put in Latin, De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum: there is no dispute about tastes. Beyond such anomalies, a corked wine smells like a wet dog, wet cardboard or a mould-infested room. For effect, imagine a room with a wet dog atop lots of wet cardboards, sealed for centuries. (Don?t worry, the dog gets rescued!) The responsible compound, 2-4-6 Trichloroanisole (TCA), is extremely pungent-smelling and unmistakable even in miniscule concentrations. Near-about 5-6% of bottled wines worldwide (and that is a very safe figure) suffer untimely death at the hands of this nasty, yet-hard-to-trace, killer. Only knowledge of its origins is that it occurs in bottles sealed with a cork.
Screw-capped wines are immune to this, but most ?nophiles believe that, along with bacteria, Stelvin (screw cap in jargon) obliterates all the romance associated with uncorking a wine bottle. Probably a contest on the lines of ?Collect ten crown caps; Win a free trip? could help push and popularise the valid cause. Apart from the wet-dog smell of corked/ tainted wines, there are other faults to be accosted? vinegar, acetone, boiled cabbage, rotten eggs, plastic, burning match (sulphur), dirty socks ?and if your obstinate guests take well to any of these in the bottle you have just opened and found insipid, hold your silence and allow them their ignorant satisfaction: bad wine was never put to better use!
Gustatory faults
The last stage more or less confirms what one possibly found earlier on sight or nose. Lack of structure, when one or more elements (alcohol, tannins and acidity) tend to dominate or stand out, can be the most basic of vinification faults, not one which developed after bottling. A very famous sommelier when asked, ?Sir, when did you last mistake a Bordeaux for a Burgundy?? replied, ?Not since lunch.? It just goes to show that at the end of it all, even the biggest of nostrils have their blockages.
The term to remember is ?threshold?. It is defined as a personal level of acceptability, before a thing, idea, or sensation can be considered offensive. One man?s woody is another man?s burnt. One man?s faint is another?s excessive. Just like one man?s foreplay is another?s kinky.
As a result, disagreements on whether a particular bottle is bad, or not can always abound with as many opinions as their are people present. The safest thing to do then is to trust your own judgement, but also allow for objectivity, as much possible.
Also, be humble, not just to the wine waiter, but also to your senses. Listen to what they are telling you, both of them. And also allow for patience. Sometimes a wine, which is closed and tight may open up after being decanted and allowed to air. Sometimes a bottle that seemed great may deteriorate faster than a relationship when left in the bottle. Either ways, be alert.
There is nothing wrong with sending a bottle back; seeing how much hotels charge. It is the least they can be prepared for?wine going bad. And given how deplorable storage and stock movement conditions can be in India, there is a high chance of wine spoilage.
There are two ways to protect against such spoilage. The lengthy method I will shed light on next time. The simpler one: drink fast!
?The writer is a sommelier