I just took my first sip from tonight’s wine, and the oddest thing has presented itself …
I decanted the wine an hour ago. Expressive and open aromatics. Nearly totally dead and blank on the palate. Not that I would expect any of these flaws to behave this way, but I have no reason to believe this is TCA or TBA or brett or geosmin.
Anyone have any clue what’s going on here?! My working hypothesis at the moment is the wine is super tight and/or closed, albeit in a fashion I am not-at-all accustomed to. …
Aromatics are expressive, my dinner tasted good, and my backup wine presented just as it has on three prior days (I had leftovers; same bottle), and none of the symptoms I’ve experienced the two times I did catch the rona. So, thankfully, not that.
interesting to see two votes for low-level TCA so far … this type of presentation would be a first for me, as far as I can recall.
After an hour of tasting (after an hour decant), I gave up and went to my aforementioned backup bottle, for which I was anything-but-excited (a Pigato that simply is not my thing, even though there’s nothing wrong with it)
interesting UPDATE: I just checked CT. Another user whom I trust unfailingly, despite some divergences in our palates at times, had what sounds like a very similar experience with this same wine … get this: 7.5 years ago. And not once, but twice. That person posts here, too.
Something’s not right with this wine.
Bonus coincidence: that other taster and I scored this wine within 1 point of each other.
Double Bonus: ALL other CT users who tasted and scored this wine scored it approximately 20 points higher than we did. And some of those other CT users are folks I trust. Weeeeiiiird!
Very low levels of TCA usually make the wine mute aromatically, ie. completely the opposite how the wine was here. I don’t think that TCA is the culprit here.
However, what you taste is also what you smell (retronasally). It sounds very weird that you would be able to smell the wine from the glass but not from your mouth. The only way this sounds plausible from a scientific point of view is that the compounds are volatile in low pH environment but not in a higher-pH environment. Which sounds a bit kooky but not impossible.
I guess there’s also a simpler explanation out there, but without tasting the wine in question, it’s pretty impossible to give solid explanations.
This is the conventional wisdom, and no doubt has some validity, but I have tasted dozens of corked bottle where I could readily taste the underlying wine. So I’m convinced that TCA can subdue a wine somewhat, but it can’t mute it completely.
I’ve had the exact same experience with a wine I had a case of. During a certain period (3 years?) 3-4 bottles showed exactly what Brian described. Bottles before and after were all as they should.
I kind of assumed the wine went through a dumb phase, though during that period I suspected TCA.
I haven’t had it before. Will be very curious to see if tonight brings the same experience as last night. I’ve had plenty of wines that were tight, but never one that was so open aromatically yet so dumb on the palate.
FWIW, the wine did look older than I was expecting it to look (if served blind, based on color alone, I’d be guessing closer to 20 yo than 10 yo).
I have experienced this before due to low level TCA. Some of the initial volatiles obscure the perception of the TCA and then as these dissipate, you are left with a more textbook presentation.
Totally agree very low levels of TCA can flip a mute switch on the wine. I’ve had multiple bottles over the years that seemed abnormally and unexpectedly dead when there was no detectable TCA after opening but on day two or after many hours of air time I was able to pick up the faintest of TCA in them.
More of the same last night. Only change last night was that the Nose was a notch or two less expressive than on Day 1. I’m coming around to the idea of TCA or TBA; if TCA, it’s slight enough that I cannot taste or smell it. Coincidentally, a few years ago I had a very similar experience with a bottle of the '13 Swan. Bad luck with this bottling for me, I guess.
