I know there are certain ‘faults’ that are identified in the wine trade. Some have to do with intent–still wine shouldn’t have spritz, dry wine shouldn’t taste sweet, etc. Brett often falls in this group as well, though opinions vary. Oxidation is generally not good, but there are nonetheless oxidative styles of wine that are well-liked. Even VA has its place, especially in dessert wines.
I think there are some faults, though, that have a purely physiological basis. Hence they are essentially objective. There is no context where noticing them is good.
-High Levels of Mercaptans
A mercaptan is used in natural gas (at very low concentrations because most people are so sensitive) to give it a smell. Skunk spray also has mercaptans. The fact that mercaptans are a defense mechanism suggests they are almost universally offensive. I suppose some rotten cabbage, skunk, or rubber tire could be complexing at very low levels. But would anyone find skunk-cabbage wine pleasing if it dominated?
-TCA/corked wine
At low levels, it seems simply to flatten a wine. At high levels, it’s like a moldy basement. I don’t think these could ever be a positive feature.
Are there others? The Carg often mentions geosmin, a byproduct of moldy grapes. But often people enjoy earthiness, and moldy grapes can also give rise to certain ‘noble’ styles. I purposely left out volatile sulfides as well (non-thiol) as these seem to be double edged swords, often contributing to varietal character.
Interesting post indeed - and one that I’d be curious to hear from others on as well, especially those who drink a lot more wine than me
The ‘challenge’ is that even with the two mentioned, ‘professionals’ will oftentimes disagree about their presence/magnitude. Yes, you can have the wines run ‘chemically’ to determine the presence of either, but with tastings, I’ve noted numerous times when differences in perception levels lead to one ‘professional’ having a very different opinion about the presence of, say, mercaptans, then another . . .
I would like to throw in the overuse of oak to the point it never intergrates with the wine. I’ll narrow that down abit and focus on white wines that may have a normal shelf life of 3-7 years. If oak overwhelms the flavors of the wine, the entire life of the wine, that is a fault in winemaking, imo. The same can be said with reds, but with longer lived wines and typically more tannin structure, a chance of intergration exists at some point.
This is definitely a problem when it comes to thinking about this. I guess I’m thinking of a hypothetical scenario where a person is presented with two wines–one that is clean, the other that has been dosed with TCA or skunk spray. Assuming the chemicals were in sufficient concentration to be smelled, virtually any person would prefer the clean wine.
It does make me wonder about Brettanomyces byproducts. From an evolution standpoint, it makes sense that humans would avoid moldy smelling foods and skunky smelling foods. So why not cow pasture smelling foods? But it seems at low to moderate levels if you did the thought experiment–one clean wine, then the same wine with some 4-EP–the latter might be preferred, though probably only by enthusiasts.
From my experience geosmin also dulls a wine. The heavy clay-like earthiness isn’t particularly pleasant and it hides he fruit. It also can settle out as a factor of acidity and time. One local winery had this issue (now resolved, I think) and the wines came around a year or so after release. Later, another producer got fruit from a nearby vineyard with the same issue and was pretty upset with how the wine was showing. A year later and it’s settled out, leaving a clean, expressive and impressive wine.
Cool–thanks for the first hand info! It would be interesting to try some wine known to be affected so I could pin down the flavor and aroma.
On a tangential note, have you every encountered wine that smells like seaweed? I think it might be an iodine-related aroma since seaweed is heavy in iodine. Supposedly iodine smell comes from moldy fruit as well. But maybe it’s more of a bacteria digesting dead material smell, perhaps sulfide-related. I kind of like seaweed smelling wines, oddly enough.
Seaweed? Yeah, but don’t recall specific wines. Something like that I would suspect may be a grouping of aromas that together, in the right proportion, come across that way.
The one I keep being totally annoyed by is ripe fruit at the expense of varietal character. The amazing thing to me is that all the Zins, Shiraz, et al., that all taste the same, get high ratings. This is not so much a fault in wine making as a fault in judgement. Who can say that he has had a Zinfandel in the past 10 years than has the distinctive Zinberry fruit that hooked so may people back then?
The one that returns to me again and again is EndOfBottle and EndOfCase with EndOfStash being the worst one. Sooner or later all of my favorites hit me with this.
Obviously, that’s what a lot of people want from a wine. Difficult to comprehend as it is… The thing is, most of the time, those wines have a few other things “wrong” with them, too, from my palate perspective.
There certainly still are some producers who continue to make normally ripe Zin, but it is a small minority.
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