Common wine faults and how to recognize them
What is a wine fault
A wine fault is considered as any aroma that detracts from the quality or experience of a wine. Freely interpreted it refers to a wine that does not smell of fruit aromas and/or smells of something unpleasant. Virtually all wine styles today smell of fruit aromas, except when a wine has been aged. In that case, the fruit aromas have given way to aging aromas. A wine free of wine faults is also called a ‘clean wine’.
How to recognize a wine fault
Nine out of ten times you can recognize a wine fault by smelling the wine. If the wine smells unpleasant, it is better to skip tasting it. When you order a bottle of wine in a restaurant and you are poured a small amount, just smelling the wine is what you are supposed to do. This is how you detect most wine faults, so tasting is unnecessary. By the way, smelling the cork is a bit of a gimmick, because many wine faults come not from the cork but from the wine! The reverse is also true, which is another reason to skip smelling the cork 😊.
Common faults in wine
The most well-known and common wine faults are:
- Cork taint – the wine smells musty. You can compare it to a damp cellar or wet cardboard. The smell is caused by a fungus that often grows in the cork itself. It is estimated that 1 to 3% of wines suffer from ‘cork taint’. Wines with screw caps can also have cork taint, but this is much less common
- Oxidation – the wine lacks fruity aromas. Worst-case scenario, the wine smells like vinegar. The culprit? The wine was exposed to too much oxygen at the wrong moment during the winemaking process. Oxidation can also occur once the wine is bottled. For example, in old wines when the cork dries out and no longer seals properly. Or simply when you keep an opened bottle of wine for too long
- Brett – causes animal and barnyard aromas in wine. The term Brett is short for a yeast, Brettanomyces, which produces the aroma. It occurs mainly in red wines
- Mousiness – yes, that’s right, wines can smell like a mouse cage! This aroma can also be described as popcorn (which is delicious, but not in your wine). Wines that use little to no sulfites are particularly at risk for this wine fault, such as natural wines
Sometimes a wine fault is not easy to detect by smell, or you may doubt the correctness of a wine when you put your nose in the glass. In that case, tasting is the way to go. A wine fault suppresses the fruit aromas and causes flavors such as acidity, tannin, and/or alcohol to dominate unpleasantly in a wine.
Wine faults are a matter of opinion
Even though wine faults sound like undeniably unpleasant wines, that’s not how it works. You must know that aroma sensitivity varies between people, as does sensitivity to wine faults. To illustrate, we are all sensitive to cork taint. That is why everyone finds this aroma unpleasant. But Brett can be very pleasant in lower concentrations or in general for some people. It can even give a wine complexity. The mouse fault is also very personal. Not everyone smells this fault, and it can vary from day to day for the same person. Moreover, this wine fault can even develop over time and disappear again in a bottle. Or better yet, while drinking the wine!
In conclusion: don’t be too quick to judge when you smell a wine fault and your companions are unaware of it. It may well be that they simply cannot detect it or even appreciate a little barnyard smell in their wine 😊.
Robert, Cloud Wine
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