How to Tell if Wine Has Gone Bad?
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Wine Faults and How to Find Them
There’s no worse feeling than opening a bottle of wine and finding out it’s gone bad. Wine has a long shelf life and generally stays in good shape for months and even years, but it is more delicate than you think.
Here’s how to spot spoiled wine and how to know what’s wrong with it. We can’t always avoid spoiled wine, but at least we can learn from it!
Oxidised Wine
Oxidation is the most common wine fault, and it happens when the wine is exposed to oxygen in the air, either in the winery or a bottle with a faulty closure. Oxygen changes the wine’s color and aroma, making it darker, and giving it nutty and bruised apple scents. Oxidation is unavoidable, but a closed bottle of wine shouldn’t suffer from it for many years. Once oxygen finds its way into the bottle, it ruins it, and even worse, it encourages the development of bacteria, sealing the wine’s fate.
Vinegary Wine
All vinegar comes from alcohol; wine or cider vinegar are good examples. And yes, your wine can and will turn into vinegar, eventually. Acetic acid bacteria are everywhere (even in bottled wine), and they feed on ethanol to produce acetic acid, AKA vinegar. Still, these microorganisms need oxygen to function, so if the wine is protected from the oxygen in the air, these bacteria are not a problem. Once acetic acid bacteria get going, they can’t be stopped. The good news? Slight vinegar scents are not always a deal-breaker. Many well-aged wines are a bit vinegary.
