Vinishko, don’t worry: how to understand that something is wrong with wine, and how to fix it

Andrey Ushakov

Director of the Marketing Management Department of the L-Wine wine project.

Wine is like art. There is a lot of subjective stuff in it, and the last argument for or against will always be “like/dislike.” But there are also objective parameters for assessing the quality of a noble drink. If you are confused by the smell of wine or an unusual taste, then it is quite possible that you have come across a defective sample. There are several life hacks that can help you recognize flaws in wine from the first sip. We tell you how to diagnose a bottle and insure yourself against purchasing a spoiled drink in the future, even if you are new to the wine world.

"Cork disease"

Symptoms: The wine has an unpleasant, pungent odor, reminiscent of wet cardboard or dog hair. If you smell “dog” or “damp cellar”, these are not the rich nuances of the original complex wine. Don't you think the wine is sick?

What to do

Pour the wine down the sink - alas, it cannot be saved. Between 1% and 7% of all cork-corked wine in the world is contaminated with “Cork taint” responsible compounds. Determination of haloanisoles and halophenols in cork matrix: A review of specific “cork” bacteria. If you don’t want to participate in the lottery, buy wine with a screw cap, there is simply nowhere for such bacteria to come from.

Important

• Taste wine at the appropriate temperature. Wine that is too cold simply won't smell. Restaurants take advantage of this by freezing their less-than-best wines. Wine that is too warm (stored in a kitchen cabinet) will begin to seep out the alcohol. The taste will not be the most pleasant, and it will be difficult to find anything in the aroma other than alcohol. Place red wine in the refrigerator for 15 minutes before tasting, and white wine for 2.5 hours before tasting.
• Drink wine from normal glasses. The glass should be without decoration or color, large enough (at least 300 ml) and with walls tapering upward. This will help you see the wine, smell all the smells and taste it fully.
• Try the wine separately from the food first. This makes it possible not to be distracted by its smells.

Delving into the tones of fallen leaves and arguing about the type of fuel in Riesling is a voluntary thing. If you don't want to, don't bother. But distinguishing spoiled wine from simply unusual wine is a useful skill for everyone. You know right away when to return the bottle to the store, and when you can carry out successful resuscitation yourself. True, you need to understand: all people are different, and so are wines. Sometimes it's not the defects, but the fact that you and the wine just don't fit together.

Invisible service will always provide good wine. And to make it easier for you to distinguish good from bad, he will teach you to understand wine and give you a pair of the right glasses with your first order. They help the wine to open up and give out maximum flavor.

Reduction, or “hydrogen sulfide bouquet”

Symptoms: The wine smells like boiled cabbage, garlic or a rotten egg.

What to do

This case is not at all hopeless. This smell appears if the wine lacks oxygen and the yeast begins to release thiols - organic sulfur compounds. You can improve the smell with the help of aeration - saturating the wine with oxygen.

Pour the wine into a decanter (a process called decanting) and let the drink “breathe” until the smell dissipates. Not ready to wait a few hours? Stir the wine with a silver spoon or drop a clean copper coin into the decanter to precipitate the sulfur compounds.

Why does the taste of wine spoil?

The bouquet of a good wine balances three main tastes - acid (sourness), bitterness (tannin) and sweetness. This balance is very fragile; a number of reasons can destroy it.

• Quality of raw materials. The taste of the finished wine depends on it by 75–80%. The most common mistake is incorrectly determining the acidity of the must, which does not affect the taste of the wine for the better.
• Violation of the technological chain. You incorrectly calculated the proportions of the required ingredients or incorrectly weighed the required amount of yeast, sugar or basic raw materials, allowed excessive contact with oxygen, and so on and so forth. There can be many possible violations, and all of them negatively affect the taste of the finished drink.
• Yeast quality. The quality of wort fermentation depends on the activity of the yeast colony. If you do not know the origin of the raw materials and you decide to rely on natural fermentation, then you may be in for a very unpleasant surprise. Substances used to treat garden berries and fruits reduce the activity of wild yeasts, or even kill them. As a result, fermentation may go poorly, and the wine will turn out sluggish and inexpressive, with excessive acidity. Therefore, many experienced winemakers prefer not to rely on wild yeast, but to use special wine cultures that will ensure active and complete fermentation.

There are many reasons why a wine may taste less than ideal. What to do if this happens? The first thing that comes to mind is to try to correct the bouquet of wine.

There are different ways to correct the taste of wine, but none gives a 100% guarantee of success.

Wine made from unripe grapes

Symptoms: The wine smells of cat urine, grass and green capsicum.

What to do

The patient is more dead than alive. Unfortunately, if the wine is made from low-quality raw materials, “medicine” is powerless. This usually happens if, for example, weather conditions did not allow the grapes to ripen and gain all the necessary qualities, but the winemaker still decided to put them into production.

Well-known manufacturers who value their name do not allow themselves to do this. So choose wines from trusted brands to avoid this defect.

Number of stages

Each distillation reduces the amount of drink produced. This is exactly what worries “thrifty” distillers.

In order to get as much moonshine as possible, they try to distill the product as little as possible.

And these are heads in the body, and tails, and a complete set of fusel oils. It is necessary to distill at least twice, and then only if there is confidence that all the time frames for pasture were met.

This is the third law of moonshine.

Law 3. The more distillation cycles, the purer the product.

Wine turns to vinegar

Symptoms: The wine smells like vinegar or acetone or nail polish remover.

What to do

Only Jesus could turn water into wine, but no one could turn vinegar into wine. The maximum you can hope for with such a bottle is to use the wine for culinary purposes.

We are used to hearing that wine only gets better with age, but this is only true for noble, complex wines with great storage potential. Simple, inexpensive wines “for every day” should be drunk, as they say, here and now: white wines are best consumed in the first two years, red wines should not be stored for longer than 3–5 years. So, if you see a 2011 Sauvignon Blanc in a regular chain store for 800 rubles, then leave it on the shelf.

Let's look

For what? Color is a quick way to judge the shape of a wine. If a restaurant brings you Caesar with lettuce leaves that have fallen into depression, you will refuse without trying. It’s the same with wine: sometimes you can immediately understand by the color that something is wrong with the wine.

How? Pour the wine into a transparent glass, take it by the stem and tilt it almost horizontally over a clean sheet of paper or a white napkin - look at it all from above. If there is not enough light, a flashlight on your phone will help out.

What should not happen:

• The wine cannot be reddish or brown - this means it is no longer in good condition. The reasons for this can be different, from improper storage to advanced age. If you didn’t go to a wine tasting of the 90s, but brought a bottle of the last vintage from the supermarket, close it and feel free to bring it back.

What could be:

• Slight cloudiness - filtering wines is now becoming unfashionable. It is believed that cloudy, unfiltered wine retains more flavor. Haze is especially common in biodynamic and natural wines.
• Orange shades in all wines over 5 years old. This is also normal for sherries and (surprise!) orange wines: Georgian ones from qvevri and vin jaune (“yellow wines”) from the French region of Jura.
• A light transparent precipitate in the form of crystals is salts of tartaric acid, and this is not a defect. But, in order not to confuse buyers, winemakers often play it safe and get rid of such sediment in advance. To do this, the wine is cooled and further filtered.

Lyrics

If the wine passes this test, you can relax and speculate what color it is. If nothing comes to mind, the Internet will help - there are many tables with tips. Although no one is stopping us from showing independence and, instead of all sorts of marsalas and sakura, remembering the shades of doctor’s sausage or grandfather’s cherry “nine”.

"Sunstroke"

Symptoms: The wine smells like dust and cardboard.

What to do

A slight but noticeable smell of dust, which clogs the natural aromas of wine, appears if it has been stored for a long time in bright light or even in the sun. It's up to you to decide whether to drink this wine or not (we wouldn't).

When choosing wine in a regular store, always pay attention to storage conditions. If the bottles are directly under the lamps or the room is too hot, then it is better to look for another place for wine shopping.

Let's try

For what? This is like final confirmation that the wine is normal. We filter out the main defects when we check the color and smell, so a damaged bottle should not reach this stage. In addition, we taste not so much: bitter, salty, sweet and sour. All these berries, cats and so on are all in the aroma. The taste should be pleasant, but there are no strict requirements for it. But it’s better to talk about what is normal in the taste and what should be alarming.

How? Put a little more wine in your mouth than usual. After this, gently move it around, as if you had decided to rinse your mouth after brushing your teeth. The wine should be everywhere: on the gums, on the entire surface of the tongue, etc. After this, swallow the wine and pay attention to how long you feel its taste.

What should not happen:

• Bitterness. If the wine is very bitter, this is another sign of oxidation or premature aging, just like the brick in color and the nutty-apple smell.
• Wine vinegar. If the wine is too warm, it may well turn into vinegar. This will be felt in the aroma, but if there is any doubt, the taste will confirm it. This happens if the wine was stored incorrectly in the store or at home and you decided to put it on the radiator. Acetic bacteria destroy alcohol, so there will be no effect from such wine either.

What could be:

• A few bubbles. You pour wine into a glass, and there are bubbles on the walls of the glass, and your mouth feels strangely tingling. The reason is that sometimes there is some sugar left in wine that has already been bottled, and it ferments while it is traveling to us. This is not always a defect - sometimes such a move even helps make the wine taste fresher, but this more often applies to whites.

Lyrics

For professionals, the taste of wine is not as important as the aroma, so they describe it very sparingly. Assess the level of acidity, tannins (tartness) and sugar. A wine is considered good if none of these parameters overwhelm you. That is, if the wine is sour or tart to the point of discomfort, this is not good, but this is not a defect.

Advice

When tasting wine, retronasal tasting will help you get more from the taste and aromas. This is the clever name for the “gurgling” of wine. You need to take a little more wine into your mouth than usual and breathe air through it. This is what we do when we accidentally take a sip of hot tea and try to cool it down. Feel free to make loud noises - it's normal and looks very professional.

Oxidase cass, or browning of wine

Symptoms: the wine takes on a brownish tint and a faint smell of Madeira, hazelnuts and rotten apples. Red wine takes on a dry, bitter taste, while white wine vaguely resembles apple cider.

What to do

This defect occurs at the production stage and, unfortunately, is not corrected in any way. In the skin of rotten or moldy grapes, oxidative enzymes - oxidases - are actively produced. If a large amount of rotten grapes gets into production, then when the finished wine comes into contact with oxygen, an oxidation process occurs and the drink changes its properties.

How to get rid of the smell of acetone in moonshine?

In 99% of cases, the acetone smell is from poorly selected heads during the second distillation. This is a harmful fraction of moonshine, which contains many harmful impurities: acetone, aldehyde, methyl alcohol, acetic acid, and so on. To get rid of them, it is necessary to perform another distillation and remove all the smelly impurities.

But there's a tricky problem here. Everyone has a different sense of smell and a person may mistake something completely different for the smell of acetone. Especially with grain or fruit mash, when the bouquet of odors is maximum. Therefore, it is necessary to consider all possible causes of the unpleasant odor of the distillate and options for solving them.

Causes of the unpleasant odor of acetone

We proceed from the fact that by acetone we can understand both acetone and a number of other harmful impurities. What could go wrong:

• They didn't take the heads.
  In most cases, this is precisely the problem. This compound begins to boil at about 56 degrees, while alcohol starts at 78.4 degrees. Therefore, it is very important to collect the first drops in a separate container and remove them from our product.
• The mash has spoiled. It can sour and mold. After distilling such a liquid, moonshine develops a very unpleasant and pungent odor, which many may confuse with acetone. Several high-quality distillations can solve this issue, but after 1 or even 2 distillations, the drink can frankly stink.
• Sprinkler. During distillation, the mash can boil violently and fall into the receiving container. Raw alcohol instantly becomes cloudy and the organoleptic properties of the product deteriorate. This is very important for mash made from grains and fruits, when the liquid foams strongly during heating.
• Poor quality ingredients. First of all, it is yeast, but it can also depend on raw materials: sugar, grain, fruit. For stable and clean fermentation, it is best to use turbo yeast. Yes, they are a little more expensive than regular alcoholic drinks, but they have very little effect on the cost of moonshine. There is a good selection of yeast in the Dobry Zhar online store.
• Wrong choice of water. We have already talked about which water is best for moonshine, so we recommend that you study this publication. Water with a lot of impurities or iron will in most cases negatively affect the quality of the distillate.

Various situations can happen in everyday life, for example: “I accidentally dropped something smelly into the moonshine and now it smells bad,” but in all other cases the problem will be associated with one of the reasons described above.

How to get rid of the smell of acetone?

If an unpleasant situation does occur, then what is the best way to deal with the resulting moonshine?

1. Perform another distillation to separate harmful fractions.
   Even if you have already distilled the moonshine twice, you need to make another distillation, having previously calculated the amount of harmful impurities. To do this, the volume of pure alcohol in the liquid is calculated, for example: in 4 liters of 40% moonshine there are 1.6 liters of pure alcohol. The recommended percentage of goals is 10%, that is, 0.16 liters. That is, from 4 liters of raw alcohol of 40% strength, we will need to select about 160 ml of heads.
2. Use quality equipment.
   It doesn’t matter what kind of apparatus you have: with a steam chamber or a reflux condenser. It is important that all components work correctly and that the product is truly purified during the distillation process. We can recommend our moonshine stills under the Phoenix and Dobry Zhar brands. We are manufacturers, so we are completely confident in their quality.
3. Rectification.
   If you have the opportunity to use a distillation column, which is a tall frame filled with a spiral-prismatic or regular Panchenkov wire packing, then you should use it. There is no point in extracting any aroma from the product, since it smells quite unpleasant, so you just need to select as much alcohol as possible. But don't forget about the heads!

As always, all technology again returns to high-quality double distillation with separation of harmful fractions. Do not spare the heads and, especially, the tail fractions when selecting the product. Let it be better if it is 200-300 ml less, but of high quality and with a pleasant taste.

What's better not to do?

When moonshine frankly doesn’t work out, it’s quite difficult to quickly revive it and serve it. But if the smell is slightly present, but everything is not so bad, then you can use the so-called “masking”. We strongly discourage doing this, so the information is provided for informational purposes only.

1. Infuse moonshine.
   Oak chips, prunes or any other product. This will indeed make the distillate tastier, but will not affect its quality in any way. There were stinking impurities in it, and they still remain. Therefore, we do not recommend this method either for ourselves or for others.
2. Touch up.
   A spoonful of burnt sugar will turn the clear liquid into a noble cognac-colored drink within 1 minute. At the placebo level, we will actually perceive this moonshine better. But in fact, the same distillate with an excess of fusel oil.
3. Use essences .
   A priori, the essence is a good product. This is a food flavoring that makes the product more interesting in a few seconds. But you need to use it with high-quality moonshine, so that it becomes even better, and does not hide its bad qualities.

It is useless to filter seawater through cheesecloth. It will still remain sea water. It’s the same with moonshine: until you do high-quality distillation to separate harmful fractions, the drink will not get better.

When should I request a replacement?

Before asking for a replacement, keep in mind that it's not just infections that can affect the taste and aroma of wine. Here are just a few possible reasons:

Transportation : from shaking, wines get tired and close, temporarily losing their inherent aroma (storage in a vibrating refrigerator can lead to the same consequences), but if you give them a rest for at least a week, they will regain their previous condition.

The well-being of the taster and the circumstances of the tasting influence perception : sick and healthy, tired and rested, busy and idle will evaluate the same product differently. This often explains the impression that wine in Russia is “not at all the same” as what you drank when visiting the producing country.

Previously drunk and eaten : if you ate chocolate candy, then before tasting the wine it would be wise to pause and drink still mineral water; If you are trying several wines, serve them “increasingly” so that the next one does not make you regret the previous one.

Tasting temperature : A wine served at the wrong temperature will seem uninteresting or spoiled.

Benefits of rectifier

A distillation column is a device that essentially resembles a multi-stage filtration device. The rectifier is used to produce raw alcohol with a strength of 96 degrees.

Such a product will have excellent characteristics; it is used to make tinctures. You can drive moonshine through a distillation column; this will help turn an unattractive product into a very pleasant drink.

Alcohol is passed through the rectifier once; it does not require reprocessing. It's quite convenient.

So, what is the use of a rectifier:

• Helps rid alcohol of fusel oils, impurities and other substances dangerous to human life.
• Significantly improves the taste and smell of the drink, removes bitterness, sour taste or unpleasant aftertaste. This will improve the smell of the drink.
• Improves product quality. The strength of the drink increases, its color and other characteristics change.

Often the rectifier is used in combination with other methods. One such method is infusion. Moonshine is infused on various products, which improves the quality of alcohol and its organoleptic characteristics.

Souring

The most common problem is that when air enters the mash, acetic and lactic acid bacteria convert some of the alcohol into vinegar and water, releasing other substances. As a result, the mash gives off acetone, and after distillation the moonshine turns out sour.

Solution: you can try to quench the acid with soda and distill the distillate again, selecting the “heads” and “tails” (more details in the link above). The effectiveness of fixing moonshine depends on the degree of souring of the mash.

Prevention: be sure to install a water seal on the fermentation tank and check its tightness in order to protect the mash from oxygen.

Pure acetone is transparent, just like alcohol.

Disadvantages (flaws, defects) of wine

Undesirable changes in the taste and color of wine, spoiling its organoleptic properties. Often the causes of defects lie in the mistakes or inexperience of the winemaker. Fortunately, they are easily removable, and many go away on their own over time without outside intervention.

Cloudiness

Typical for homemade wines made from pears, plums and other fruits containing little tannic acid. Cloudiness also occurs when the temperature of unfermented sweet wine increases, for example, when the drink is transferred from the cellar to a warm room. Under suitable conditions, the yeast is reactivated, causing secondary fermentation.

If the reason is in the fruit, then even after prolonged aging the wine will remain cloudy. During repeated fermentation, the wine suddenly begins to become cloudy.

In the first case, the problem is solved by clarifying the wine with gelatin, egg white or other methods, in the second - they wait until the end of fermentation, settle the wine and drain it from the sediment.

Cloudy apple wine can benefit from clarification

Browning

It happens if rotten fruits get into the raw materials. Gradually, a brown color appears in the wine from top to bottom, then it becomes cloudy.

The defect goes away on its own after a few months of exposure. The turbidity falls out as sediment at the bottom, and the wine becomes clear again. To speed up the process, you can use filtration or start secondary fermentation by adding a small portion of sugar.

Blackening

Appears if the wine has been in a metal container for a long time. When wine comes into contact with metal, a compound is formed that turns the drink black. This defect is clearly visible in white wines.

Over time, the blackening goes away on its own; airing and lightening with gelatin helps speed up the “recovery.”

We remove possible unpleasant odors before distillation and distill high-quality moonshine

When producing homemade alcoholic beverages, it is important to follow key rules at the initial stage.

So, how to make odorless moonshine:

• Use clean raw materials to prepare mash. It should not contain foreign odors or impurities. The ingredients must be fresh and of high quality. Violation of this point results in the appearance of an aroma of hydrogen sulfide.
• Use clean dishes that do not contain foreign odors.
• Take freshly prepared mash without traces of mold and fat.
• Observe the fermentation process. It is important to prevent disruption. To help determine readiness, it is better to use a water seal. When the bubbling process has stopped, it’s time to cook the mash.
• Don't overdo it with yeast. After converting sugars into alcohol, they are of no benefit; on the contrary, they contribute to the appearance of an unnecessary aroma that needs to be knocked down
• Lighten the mash with bentonite before brewing.

Features of raw materials or yeast

The smell of acetone sometimes appears in grain mashes, especially those made cold (without boiling the wort), or if “wild” yeast was used. The problem may be poor grain quality or contamination of the wort with pathogenic microorganisms. Sometimes the smell of acetone in mash comes from sugar treated with preservatives and even tap water.

Solution: slow re-distillation with the selection of at least 15% of the “heads” (of absolute alcohol) and the end of the selection of the “body” when the strength in the stream drops below 50% vol.

Prevention: use high-quality raw materials and cultured yeast strains.

Medications

Taking certain medications can have a clear effect on a person's body odor. This is characterized by disruption of the functioning of internal organs. The appearance of acetone-like sweat odor is often a consequence of the use of the following groups of medications:

• antidepressants;
• medicines against bacteria;
• medicines against tuberculosis;
• anticancer chemotherapy;
• non-steroidal antiphlogistic agents;
• antifungal medications.

These groups of drugs are characterized by high hepatotoxicity. This causes decreased liver function and accumulation of harmful substances, ketone bodies and nitrogenous compounds in the bloodstream. For this reason, a person smells of acetone.