Even wine has its faults! Beyond what may be a romantic expression attached to a product, the olfactory defects in wine do exist, and they are different and varied in nature.
Olfactory defects of wood.
They are defects related to the permanence of wine in old barrels and poorly cared for, where molds, fungi, and bacterial strains (actinomycetes) have formed, giving the wine the characteristic olfactory defects, including the classic smell of rotten wood.
Other defects refer to the cap. So much so that today many companies are offering alternative materials to cork for bottle closures.
The cork is in fact a complex substance that, even after vigorous treatments, retains a nutritional power that is not indifferent from a biological point of view.
The processing of this material leads to the development of compounds that impart odors to the wine such as mushroom, mold, dirt, wet cardboard, phenolic, smoky, medicinal, metallic, etc.
Other wine defects.
The other wine defects are:
- Smell of geranium - Due to the degradation of sorbic acid, which is used as an adjuvant to control refermentations by yeasts but is totally ineffective toward bacteria;
- Taste of mouse - Due to lactobacilli and brettanomyces attacking certain compounds consisting of glucose and proline;
- Taste of bitter almond - Due to the formation of benzoic aldehyde that can be formed by carbonic maceration or from benzyl residues used in epoxy tank treatments
Or from materials used as filtration aids; - Metallic taste - Due to the excess presence of metal cations in solution, such as: Copper, Iron, Zinc, Cadmium, Lead;
- Character of vanished - Due to the presence of acetic aldehyde formed from ethyl alcohol in the presence of oxygen: characteristic smell reminds us of browned apple after being cut.
- Smell of animal, leather, horse sweat, stable, pharmacy, smoky, resinous - Attributable to microbiological contamination of genera.
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