Start trying some natural reds. It’s been my experience that you’ll quickly come across one with serious VA.
The usual culprits are high alcohol, low acid red wines, more often from places in Spain, Italy, Greece, etc. where not every winery is up to modern clean standards.
Not sure I agree with that. Lopez de Heredia is an example of a wine that often has VA, Emidio Pepe is another that comes to mind, some of Thackery’s wines in CA are some others. I don’t think it’s associated with low acid, more with clean winemaking. I believe that both acetic acid and ethyl acetate are produced by the same bacteria, which is something that proponents of clean winemaking want to control.
Those would be statistically relevant factors. The later you pick, the more likely there will be bird and/or insect damage. (Also, as senescence begins, the grapes start losing their ability to defend their undamaged surfaces.) Fruit flies, bees and wasps are acetobacter vectors, and will introduce them to damaged grapes. Basically, you can start a ferment with a massive dose of VA. A good sorting regime can eliminate most of that, and activity can be stopped with a nuking of SO2.
Yes, they are related, on the same chemical pathways. They are also part of wine yeast biochemical pathway, where they are produced and immediately reconsumed as part of the fermentation process. But, in an unhealthy ferment where the yeast are under stress, they may not be reconsumed. That’s usually due to a nutrient deficiency. Mid-ferment all you have to do is add the needed nutrients and perhaps a more aggressive yeast, and the VA goes away (assuming you caught it right away). If it crops up later on, the yeast won’t fix it for you. And, that can happen if fruit flies have access to your must. Most winemakers are diligent in protecting against that happening. Most.
Speaking of fruit flies - if you get one in your glass, you’ll often pick up VA in the wine very quickly. The acetobacter is spread across the surface and acts quickly, so you can smell it right away.
The perfect answer for OP!
It is now a long time since I have smelled nal polishes and nail polish removers, so the formulations may have changed. But when I did, the nail polish itself was a lot more likely to be ethyl acetate based than the remover. Often the remover smelled of neither ethyl acerate nor acetone. Pure acetone BTW is very upleasant to sniff directly - irritating to the nose, and best avoided.
GregT
I believe the bacteria do not produce ethyl acetate directly, but a proportion of any acetic acid in wine will very quickly react to give ethyl acetate, so it has the same result.
Alan Rath
If you say you have smelled acetone on wine I will not argue with your experience, but I doubt it actually WAS acetone and rather something that smelled similar. Difficult to prove a negative, but I’ve seen no mention of acetone in wine chemistry books and articles, and neither has an enologist I discussed this with
Fruit flies may carry acetobacteria, but they are also attracted to ethyl acetate. So if you have a fruit fly in your wine and it smells of ethyl acetate, the ethyl acetate could be both cause and/or effect.
It certainly used to be true that a lot of removers were a mix. As I look online now, it seems more are mostly acetone, and the Cutex non-acetone remover is methyl not ethyl acetate.
As a chemist, I’ve had plenty of experience with acetone in the lab, though not so much in recent years. I’d say it’s a not-unattractive aroma, with somehow a kind of sweet sensation, but you don’t want to take big whiffs, for sure.
There is a difference, large one IMO, between reductive notes and those of mercaptans. Reduction blows off, always, with air contact. Mercaptans are a major fault in wine.
I’ll be more clear: I taste in wineries all the time. Fruit flies are more something you control, rather than eliminate. So, during harvest season you may have lids of some fashion on your glasses to keep them out. If one gets in, and it’s carrying a significant amount of acetobacter, the effect on the wine is almost instantaneous, so you have a before and after. You can pour a fresh glass and smell them side-by-side.
This sounds like the cheapest answer for the OP!
Most of the Alice Beaufort wines from Jenny & Francois show notable VA. They hover right at the fringe of my tolerance, but they have been useful tools to demonstrate VA to others.
Having tasted lots of wines that have VA with the dominant flaw as acetic acid, I disagree. Usually slightly elevated levels of acetic acid can give an even pleasant note of balsamico to the nose, but noticeably elevated levels make the wine smell pretty much like regular vinegar. Is relatively common in older wines - I’ve probably had more vinegary VA bombs than corked wines among the old wines I’ve had. Usually EA and acetic acid go pretty much hand in hand, but I’ve had wines with tons of EA and no noticeable acetic acid character and vice versa.
As Steve says, the best way to learn the smell is to find a bottle of nail polish remover that is mostly ethyl acetate (most are some mix of EA and acetone). Trying to find EA in a random wine will be difficult.
Agreed, although it’s quite easy to pick up low levels of EA in inexpensive Italian whites. They seem to prefer some sort of yeast strain that produces slightly elevated levels of EA when stressed and the wines are fermented very slowly in cool temperatures, resulting in wines of very fruit-forward character that have this distinctive pear drop character (some people seem to think pear drop is a characteristic of some variety/varieties, but in most cases it’s just a little bit of EA). In blind tastings it’s easy to pick up a white as an Italian white if there is that pear drop aroma - although it’s much harder to tell which part of Italy it comes from or which grape variety it is made from! 
Sure one can get this kind of aroma in a wine that is from anywhere in the world, but still I’d say guessing “Italy” when you’re smelling pear drops in your wine results in 95% success rate.
I remember witnessing this phenomenon for the first time, I was really baffled what on earth just happened to my glass of wine!
Understood. And I thought that is what you meant, but wasn’t 100% sure.
May I ask you a question though? (Others are free to respond too of course). You said earlier that if you smell ethyl acetate you should call it EA rather than VA, and I absolutely see your point. But how often do you smell the actual VA on a wine - not EA? The number of instances I can recall can be counted on the fingers on one hand, while VA is a lot more common in my experience. Both VA and EA must be present, so that must be due to the relative sensory thresholds of the two chemicals, perhaps a masking effect, and perhaps there is some person-to-person variation in sensory thresholds.
A lot of winetasting terminology is pretty sloppy. When we say we smell brett, what we actually smell is one or more of the chemicals the brettanomyces yeasts excete - not the brett itself. I think I can mainly live with that. And don’t even start me on minerality, chalk, flint and slate 
I guess this confirms what I was always told: the smell is more similar to nail polish than the remover. I do find that to be the case.
Volatile acidity (acetic acid) and the concomitant ester (ethyl acetate) are generally present in wine but at specific levels become a fault.
However certain wines like Sauternes will inevitably have higher levels of VA than most other wines due to way they are made including the deliberate presence of botrytis.
As has been stated VA is usually detected through the pervasive smell of the Ester ethyl acetate - variously described as nail polish remover or pear drops.
Too much and the wine is likely to be faulty although an obvious smell of vinegar/acetic acid would make that certain.
A mature Sauternes of good provenance should provide an appropriate, within legal limits, VA experience.
Poor storage and/or a faulty cork would usually ensure a higher level of VA with the same wine.
Amarone is another wine which will usually have a higher than average level of VA.
I always like to encourage accuracy in descriptors, so don’t like vague descriptions of a specific expression or specific descriptions of a vague expression. Some people are trying to be so smart in diagnosing something in the wine, they’ll use a broad technical term, like “brett”, rather than just describing what they perceive…and sometimes they’re wrong. I’ll use “minerality” to convey a general impression, but “flint” when I perceive flint.
I get VA in wines all the time. But, like probably any component, at lower levels it can be “in the mix” and take experience to isolate and recognize. One of Paul Draper’s favorite stories relates to the elevated VA in his first vintage of Monte Bello. He and Dave Bennion were sensitive to that and not particularly happy with the wine. At blind vertical tastings they’d always easily ID that wine and always vote it last. Yet it would finish first in the vote tallies. Was that a level headed negative impression solely due to heightened sensitivity or did their experience lead them to obsess on a minor flaw and give it extra weight?
Yes! I have that happen in the summer more than I’d care to admit. We compost a lot and the little counter top food waste bin attracts the fruit flies like crazy. When I’m not being watchful, invariably one gets into my glass and, absolutely, I can tell that scent instantly. Awesome!. Well, actually, it’s not awesome at all. It’s truly off-putting. But that was an awesome comparison. Thanks, Wes/Kevin.
Alan - Knowing that you are a lover of Rhones, try leaving a somewhat rustic Northern Rhone out for 24 hours. You can often get some pretty noticeable acetic acid/vinegar aroma. Often a thin film starts to develop on the surface, which I assume the beginning of a vinegar mother.
Otto - Your comment reminded me of how often I get true VA/acetic acid in old Barolo and Barbaresco.
One way to do it with any wine is to simply leave a glass of it sitting out for a few days to a couple weeks. You can check it each day and taste and smell the progression of the VA. Or leave a partial bottle on the counter and check it periodically. All wines will develope VA if left exposed to oxygen long enough. No need to go looking for it…