Setting Up a Wine Faults Training Lab

Wine faults are a very complex and multidimensional matter. There are different wine faults, and different ways to talk about them. And not all wine faults are created equals. Some are very distinctive, and some are more subtle and only experienced noses could detect them.

But there is more, some faults can become part of the personality of a wine or a terroir or can ruin a wine. Because there is always a threshold. Under this threshold, the fault is not detectable or add something to the wine, above and the wine could not be drunk. For example, the detection threshold of Trichloroanisole (TCA), the molecule responsible for the cork taint, is one nanogram per liter of wine, while volatile acidity starts to be detected only at a level 1000 times higher than that.

We can buy kits to train ourselves with different aroma present in the wine. But can we train our senses on different wine faults? Detecting wine faults is equally important as analyzing its flavors. After all, who will analyze a wine that many of will judge bad because of its faults. You can train yourself to detect some of the common wine faults, and we don’t need to buy any expensive kit. We can create your own wine faults training lab at home.

In this lab, we will only cover several oxidation faults, the volatile acidity fault, and sulfites/sulfides in the wine. These are common faults, and it is easy to reproduce them. Unfortunately, other faults, like Brett or cork taint, are more complex to reproduce.

Some materials and utensils are needed.

You will need the first two bottles of red wine, and two bottles of white wine. Nothing expensive, you will not often hear this from me but go find the cheapest wine you can have at Lidl, AH, or Jumbo (or any supermarket of your choice). Make sure to have a screw cap, to avoid the risk of having a corked wine. You should also choose a non-oaked wine, made with only one variety, Merlot, Sangiovese, or Grenache for the red, Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, or Sauvignon Blanc for the white.

You will also need:

• wooden matches
• white and red wine vinegar
• a bottle of sherry fino
• a measuring glass.
• a set of wine glasses
• a notebook
• plastic covers for your glasses.

To begin, open one bottle of red wine and one bottle of white wine, pour 1/3 of the content in the sink (you can also drink it), and leave the bottle open for at least one hour. Then close the bottle and put it in the fridge. The hardest part! waiting two weeks before starting the test.

After two weeks, we can set up the lab. First light two wooden matches and extinguish them. Put these burn matches in a wine glass, put a cover on it and wait at least three hours.

The odor you smell, when burning these matches, is SO2. This is the same product used in wine as a preservative, sulfites. If you smell it in a wine, bad luck. Chance, you don’t have a natural wine. This fault occurs when winemakers pour too much SO2 into the wine and sell the bottle just after the bottling. The only way to remedy this fault is to wait a few months before opening the same bottle.

For the other part of the lab, we will need 4 glasses of red wine and 4 four glasses of white wine. In the first 3 glasses of each pour 5 CL of the non-opened wine. In the last 2 glasses pour 2 CL of the stale wine and 3 CL of fresh wine (it is better to put a cover on these two).

Now we have 4 glasses for each color, 3 with new wine and one with the stale wine.

The first glasses of each color will be the control wine. Take the glass, smell it for the first time, note your impression on the notebook. Swirl the glass, smell, and try to identify some flavors, take a sip and note your impression, then spit (or not).

That was the control wines. Now it’s time to simulate some wine faults.

In the second glass for each color, pour a quarter teaspoon of vinegar, white vinegar, for the white, and red vinegar, for the red wine. Same ritual as the first. Smell the first time, note, swirl, smell and note then take a sip and spit the wine. We added about 1000 parts per million acetic acid and you should smell the vinegar strongly enough to refuse the wine in other circumstances.

You can even repeat the experiment, by adding less vinegar. About half of a quarter of a teaspoon. Should you test, there is a chance that the wine will not smell of vinegar but will have a different aromas than the control wine.

In the third glass, we need two tablespoons of Sherry Fino. Same process here, smell and note, swirl, smell and note then take a sip and spit the wine. You should find some bruised apples, roasted fruit, nutty and pungency notes. Not something nice. It is a kind of wine oxidation fault; Sherrification. It occurs when the wine is exposed to too much oxygen in a tank.

Our last glass contains a part of the opened wine. Same process: smell and note, swirl, smell and note then take a sip and spit the wine. You will notice that the wine’s stale, not fresh, all the fruity aromas are gone, instead you have notes of old papers, wet paper, and wet cardboard.

This could happen when you forget about a bottle for too long, but also when the cork lets too much oxygen enter.

Finally, we still have a last glass to smell, the one with the matches. Remove the cap and matches, and smell. You should notice the burning smell, but also a distinctive odor of flint. How this level will be a wine fault. But this is how Sulfites, the result of the combustion of sulfur in the matches, can convert into sulfides, an example of reduction. Reduction is responsible for cabbage odor or minerality. The good news, you can use a decanter (carrafe) to handle it.

This is how we can set up a test lab for some common wine faults. You may need to repeat the experience, and you can change the proportion of vinegar or Sheri to train your sensibility. You will also know that when have this kind of smell (except for reduction) you can put the wine in the sink. There is nothing to do with the wine.

But remember oxidation can be something needed for some styles of wine. Think about Jura sous voile, or aged port. The result of this controlled oxidation could be incredibly good.