What do you do when a server presents you with a wine cork from a recently opened bottle?
Myth: Sniff the cork to find out if there is a fault in the wine.
Is it a Myth or Fact? BUSTED
Smell the wine that is what you are drinking. Not the cork. Some say sniffing the cork or squeezing the cork for dryness can indicate whether excessive amounts of oxygen have crept into the bottle, but you will smell and taste that soon enough. If a server presents the cork to you, look at it and set it aside.
Identifying wine faults is one of the most difficult tasks in wine tasting. Many of us wine-drinking enthusiasts do not have a sensitive nose to instantly pick up on wine flaws. There have been several occasions where I have been halfway through a bottle to come to realize that there is a wine fault. This led me on a mission to discover how can I teach myself to detect wine faults easily. I am an average gal; my nose is not super sensitive nor am I a supertaster.
The ability to detect wine faults depends on four factors:
Experience.
Attention to details.
Concentration when you are examining the recently opened bottle.
How sensitive and well-developed your olfactory nerves are.
The biggest thing I discovered was learning what the most common wine faults were and creating a memory smell association of these wine faults with common everyday smell descriptors.
The most common wine faults that occur in both red and white wine are:
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There are a few more “wine faults” to cover that I will address in another article such as Brettanomyces, herbal aromas, tartrate crystals. They each require a more in-depth explanation.
First and foremost, I am a #winelover and I want to try to make my love for #wine contagious. At #cc1SipAtaTime, I want you to experience a love of wine in an easy-going manner with no Uber geeky stuff involved!