Introduction
When it comes to wine, what do descriptors like the musty attic, rotten eggs and Band-Aids mean? How does a wine’s packaging make it more susceptible to faults? Are there ways you can fix a faulted wine at home rather than throwing out the bottle or returning it?
In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m chatting with Keith Grainger, author of Wine Faults & Flaws: A Practical Guide.
You can find the wines we discussed here.
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Giveaway
One of you is going to win a personally signed copy of Keith Grainger’s terrific book, Wine Faults and Flaws: A Practical Guide.
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Highlights
- Why is it helpful to smell your wine glass before pouring?
- How can you gracefully handle receiving corked wine in a restaurant?
- Why is cork taint more detectable in sparkling wine?
- Which simple test can you do at home to confirm if your wine is really corked?
- How can you identify oxidized wine, and why does this occur?
- What is the difference between the beneficial oxidation in Sherry and oxidation in other types of wine?
- What are the causes and ways to prevent reduced wine?
- Should you be concerned about heat damage on wine?
- How does Brettanomyces impact wine aroma, and what’s behind the differing opinions on its desirability?
- Why are sulphites used in wine production, and should you be concerned about consuming them?
- How can the histamines present in wine impact wine consumers?
- What’s behind the increasing prevalence of lightstrike, and how does it impact wine?
- How can you identify different types of pyrazines in wine?
- Should you invest in a wine fault kit to learn more about wine faults?
- Which simple tricks can you use to improve the taste of a reduced or corked wine?
- Why would Keith love to share a bottle of wine with composer and conductor Ennio Morricone?
Key Takeaways
- Keith’s explanation of descriptors like the musty attic, rotten eggs and Band-Aids was helpful. Different wine faults have different characteristic odours and flavours which can tip you off to their presence.
- A wine’s packaging can make it more susceptible to faults. For example, wine in clear bottles are more prone to lightstrike; while certain types of screw caps can cause more oxidation.
- His suggestions on ways you can fix a faulted wine at home rather than throwing out the bottle or returning it were clever. For example, you can swirl cling wrap to reduce cork taint and use a copper coin for reduced wine.
- He also cleared up my mistaken belief that oxygen can pass from outside through a cork closure. Any oxygen that comes into the wine was in the cork in the first place and it’s slowly released into the wine.
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Cork taint is detectable in sparkling wines at extremely low levels. - Keith Grainger Click to tweet
About Keith Grainger
Keith Grainger is an award-winning wine writer, educator and consultant to the wine industry. He is the author of ‘Wine Faults and Flaws: A Practical Guide’, which won the coveted 2022 Prix de l’OIV.
His previous book ‘Wine Production and Quality’ (co-authored with Hazel Tattersall) won the Gourmand Award for the Best Wine Book in the World for Professionals, and is mandatory or recommended reading for many wine courses, including university oenology programs.
Resources
- Connect with Keith Grainger
- Le Nez du Vin Faults Kit
- AROXA™ Wine Off-Flavours Kit
- Natalie’s Top Picks (so far) | The Best Low and No-Alcohol Wines, Mixed Drinks, Spirits and Beers On The Market
- My Books:
- Diary of a Book Launch: An Insider Peek from Idea to Publication
- Unreserved Wine Talk | Episode 92: Pairing Wine and Cheese Pairings Like a Pro with Laura Werlin
- My new class The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner And How To Fix Them Forever
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Tag me on social media if you enjoyed the episode:
- @nataliemaclean and @natdecants on Facebook
- @nataliemaclean on Twitter
- @nataliemacleanwine on Instagram
- @nataliemaclean on LinkedIn
- Email Me at [email protected]
Thirsty for more?
- Sign up for my free online wine video class where I’ll walk you through The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner (and how to fix them forever!)
- You’ll find my books here, including Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World’s Best Bargain Wines and Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass.
- The new audio edition of Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass is now available on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com and other country-specific Amazon sites; iTunes.ca, iTunes.com and other country-specific iTunes sites; Audible.ca and Audible.com.
Transcript
Keith Grainger (00:00):
Wines sealed with a screw cap are more likely to show post bottling reduction. It’s worth looking inside your screw caps because the seal isn’t the screw part of the cap, it is the liner inside. You get two different types of liner. One that’s normally silver in colour that will let no oxygen at all into the wine. Another one looks a little bit like white plastic inside that will allow a limited amount of oxygen in. People often think that wine sealed with cork breathes through the cork. It doesn’t. Any oxygen that comes into the wine was actually contained in the cork in the first place. It slowly released into the wine.
Natalie MacLean (00:43):
Ah, I didn’t know that. Wow. Very cool. I love these science nerdy things. So screw caps, it’s better if there’s generally the white capsule at the top?
Keith Grainger (00:56):
The white line. That can be very, very good.
Natalie MacLean (01:05):
Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places and amusingly awkward social situations? Well, that’s the blend here on the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. I’m your host, Natalie MacLean, and each week I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle please and let’s get started.
(01:47):
Welcome to episode 269. When it comes to wine, what do descriptors like musty attic, rotten eggs, and Band-Aids mean? How does a wine’s packaging make it more susceptible to faults? And are there ways you can fix a faulted wine at home rather than having to throw out the bottle or return it? In today’s episode, you’ll hear stories and tips that answer those questions in our chat with Keith Grainger, author of Wine Faults and Flaws: A Practical Guide which won the coveted 2022 Prix de l’OIV. This is Part Two of our conversation, but you don’t need to have listened to Part One first. If you missed it, go back after you finished this episode.
One of you is going to win a personally signed copy of his terrific hardcover book that retails for $220. All you have to do is email me and let me know that you’d like to win Keith’s book. I’ll choose someone randomly from those who contact me at [email protected].
(03:00):
In personal news, I’ve just sent a sound clip to Tantor Media, one of the largest audiobook producers in the US that has published some of my favourite authors. Although, we’ve signed the deal. The clip is an audio audition of me reading from Wine Witch on Fire: Rising From The Ashes of Divorce, Defamation, and Drinking Too Much. This is such a personal book for me that I hope they’ll allow me to narrate it versus hiring an actor. The other challenge is getting the sound quality high enough such that they’ll let me record from home versus having to spend a week in Toronto at their studio. At home, I can space out the recordings without going hoarse as it’s quite a strain on the voice to read with emotion and energy four to six hours a day. I know because I did that from my first book Red, White, and Drunk All Over: A Wine Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass which you can get from audible.com.
(03:58):
My wonderful podcast editor Alex gave me some excellent advice about positioning my microphone as well as feedback on the various places I recorded sound clips around my house so that I could send in the best one. Thank goodness, I will not have to jam myself into a small closet to get the best acoustics. It was claustrophobic in there any who I should know very soon whether or not I’ll get the green light to narrate it or to be able to do it from home. Please keep your fingers crossed for me. If you haven’t got your copy of Wine Witch on Fire yet and would like to support it and this podcast that I do for you on a volunteer basis to ensure it continues, please order it from any online book retailer no matter where you live. It usually arrives in a day or two, and of course the ebook is instant. Every little bit helps spread the message in this book of hope, justice, and resilience. I’ll put a link in the show notes to all the retailers worldwide at nataliemaclean.com/269.
If you’ve read the book or are reading it, I’d love to hear from you at [email protected]. I’m also on a mission to find and review the best low and no alcohol wines, mixed drinks, spirits and beers on the market. I’ve discovered some wonderful surprises, so I’ll include a link in the show notes with the ones that I’ve found so far. I’d love to hear from you if you have any brands to recommend that I try.
Okay. On with the show.
Natalie MacLean
There was another story of an expert tasting a wine and at first he thought it was corked, but what was happening really?
Keith Grainger (05:44):
That was me and a colleague. Another one is sadly no longer with us. Who died in the last year, very sadly. We were at the wine fair in London and tasting wines from western Australia with a great wine maker called Larry Cherubino. And Larry makes wines under his own label. He also makes them under the Robert Oatley label. And a colleague of my tasted of the wine, Richard [an] excellent wine taster, picked another wine. He immediately passed it back to Larry and said Larry, this wine’s tainted. I picked that wine. He really thought the wine was tainted. Then I picked up a clean glass off the table, which was also tainted. The glasses had been washed in London water and that put the taint into the wine.
Natalie MacLean (06:33):
Oh my goodness. And I think that is why it’s a good not snooty recommendation to smell your glass in a restaurant before they even pour the wine. I do, and some people think, oh, that’s what the cool kids do, but that’s practical reason why to do that.
Keith Grainger (06:47):
Oh yeah. As you often get that sort of wet glass cloth, dishcloth nose as well, nothing to do with corkiness and straightaway think, oh God, this wine smells off. But it is just the dirty glass.
Natalie MacLean (06:58):
Exactly. Or detergent, which is going to not be a friend to wine. So how do you handle – this is more like social advice – you believe your wine is corked or you know it is and you’re in a restaurant. How do you gracefully send the bottle back? What do you say? How do you handle it?
Keith Grainger (07:16):
Of course, I’m the most antisocial social person you’ll meet [laughter].
Natalie MacLean (07:22):
[laughter]
Keith Grainger (07:23):
Yeah, send it back and mention my name.
Natalie MacLean (07:27):
[laughter]
Keith Grainger (07:28):
No. I think what you do is say, remember that the wine is not fit for purpose and I personally would say I very rarely send a wine back, but this one’s really undrinkable. It really is faulty.
Natalie MacLean (07:42):
I probably defer a little too much because I am a so-called wine expert, but I will get the server sometimes to say or could you smell this wine? And often they’ll pick it up right away and then I’m sort of collusion with them saying, oh yeah, it’s a bad bottle. But I mean I would push the point if they said nope, pas de problem madame.
Keith Grainger (08:03):
It’s actually just say you were an influencer. At one point I will just make back to trichloroanisole, the cork taint in sparkling wines, is detectable at a really, really low level. And I gave my grain of wheat, but we are looking at a 10th of a grade of wheat and therefore you are far more likely to notice it on sparkling wines, but once again, never think twice about sending it back. The sparkling wines are so delicate.
Natalie MacLean (08:30):
Yes. Why is it more detectable in a sparkling wine?
Keith Grainger (08:34):
Probably simply because the way the aromas are working, the way the fizz is making all the aromas more volatile. So to get it quite quickly, again, there’s a little hint at home.
Natalie MacLean
Sure.
Keith Grainger
If in any doubt if a wine is, I’ll use the word cork again, pour some into another glass and add about twice the amount of mineral water, not tap water, just distilled mineral water. If the aroma is the same or greater, it is the corkiness trichloroanisole.
Natalie MacLean
Okay.
Keith Grainger
If it’s diminished, it is not. It is something else.
Natalie MacLean (09:10):
Neat little science trick. Yes. As long as it’s not Chateau Margaux or something. Watering down. So too much oxygen is also the enemy of wine as it is to a lot of other substances. Air makes nails rust, fruit turn brown, wine tastes stale and turn a deep yellowish or brownish colour. Oxidized wine is another sort of bacteria related faults. It’s a fault, right, not taint?
Keith Grainger (09:33):
Yeah. Never say straight away. It can be chemical, it can be enzymes, and on some occasions it can be bacterial. Chemical oxidation is the most likely you’ll find. I’m not going to distinguish between these today.
Natalie MacLean (09:47):
Sure, thank you [laughter]. No, I understand. I’m not to dismiss the science, but yes, just some more generalizations that we can keep in mind. So does it occur mostly, oxidized wine, when the wine is being made because it’s been overexposed to air during the wine making process or the aging or at some point?
Keith Grainger (10:07):
Can occur at any stage with wine making. More likely is if the wine maker being careless and had vats have not be completely full. There’s been some oxygen, some air on top of the vat and then the wine will oxidize. The same can happen in barrels. Now, barrel maturation is of course a controlled oxygenation. Shouldn’t really use the word oxidation on this, but once again, if the barrels are not topped up properly, then oxidation can occur, can occur in storage if the wine’s being stored badly.
Natalie MacLean (10:42):
Yeah. Okay. And so what does oxidized wine taste or smell like?
Keith Grainger (10:47):
A low stage can just smell a bit of a bruised apple. When it starts getting more heavily oxidized, you start getting dried fruit coming into it. Bitterness. You start getting those what I call Sherry-like and those is even if the wines not a Olorosso Sherry. And if you taste the wine, it’s bitter. It is dried out and sometimes when wines have got oxidation, they can also become very vegetable. So very cabbage, brussel sprout.
Natalie MacLean (11:18):
Yeah. Not at all appealing. And yet you mentioned Sherry, I don’t if it’s correct to say, but the oxidized taste is part of the wine’s desirable character, of course it has other fine characteristics. But what is going on with Sherry? Why is it a good thing in Sherry?
Keith Grainger (11:33):
Well, there’s two different types of say methods of ageing Sherry. One of which is the biological ageing, which is what happens with Fino Sherry, where the wine has been aged under crust of yeast, the flor yeast, which keeps a lot of the oxidation at bay. It does let a little bit through. So we start getting this compound called acetaldehyde. So that Fino Sherry nose is acetaldehyde, but the Olorosso type of Sherry tend to be deeper in colour. They’ve been deliberately aged in butts that are not completely full. So to allow it to oxidize. Now you need a wine of the right structure for this to be beneficial. So if this were to happen on a Muscadet for example or Sauvignon Blanc, then it would always be damaging. But if it happens on a wider for the right structure, then it can be beneficial.
Natalie MacLean (12:30):
And then similarly there’s another fault, the reduced wine. There’s an absence of oxygen, smells like stagnant water or something decomposing. Can racking – moving the wine from one barrel to another in the winery – fix this problem. Or what about letting the wine breathe in the glass at home?
Keith Grainger (12:48):
Firstly, letting the wine breathe in the glass can be very beneficial. You need to really swirl it round around quite a bit and probably leave it for a bit of a while. The aromas of reduction are very vast. They can smell like drains if the problem is hydrogen sulfide, that bad egg nose. That one is so easy to pick up. And remember hydrogen sulfide is a poisonous gas, but the wine can smell of garlic and the smell of onion. If you ever smelled a skunk, you probably never want to smell one again, but those can be the notes of reduction. It’s a very complex process. Once again wines sealed with a screw cap are more likely to show you what is called post bottling reduction. And it’s perhaps worth looking inside your screw caps because the seal isn’t of course the screw part of the cap.
(13:46):
It is the liner inside. And you get two different types of liner. One that’s normally silver in colour, which is what is called a saran tin liner, and that will let no oxygen at all into the wine. Another one is what is called a saranex liner, and those normally look a little bit like white plastic inside. That will allow a limited amount of oxygen in. But certainly since the advent of screw caps, many producers have been having to change their wine making, change how much sulfur dioxide they’re adding to the wine to fit the closure. Now I don’t think that’s a good thing.
Natalie MacLean
No?
Keith Grainger
I think the closure should fit the wine and not the wine naked the other way round. There is a producer of synthetic closures called Nomacorc who make closures with different oxygen transmission rates. And the winery chooses which type they want, how much oxygen they want to get into the wine. Just one little hint here. People often think that wine, its sealed with a cork, it sort of breathes through the cork. It doesn’t. Any oxygen that comes into the wine was actually contained in the cork in the first place and gets slowly released into the wine.
Natalie MacLean (15:03):
I didn’t know that. Wow. Very cool. I love these science nerdy things. And so screw caps, it’s better if there’s generally the white sort of capsule at the top?
Keith Grainger (15:16):
Not necessarily. As we all know, this is not black or white.
Natalie MacLean
Exactly.
Keith Grainger
There is the boundary. Screw caps are great on some wines, they’re not so good on other wines. But a wine with a short shelf life and they’re talking, for example, a Sauvignon Blanc generally speaking. People will drink within two years or so of the harvest. The saranex, the white line, that can be very, very good.
Natalie MacLean
Okay.
Keith Grainger
Something that’s going to be kept for longer. Probably the saran tin line. That is ultra simplistic. Any of your listers that are in the closure industry, they’re probably going to tear me apart of trying to do so simple.
Natalie MacLean (15:53):
[laughter] They get your book and realize that there’s more depth of course behind your answers. But what would be the difference between reduced and Maderized wine?
Keith Grainger (16:01):
They’re the other end of the spectrum. Maderized is oxidized at its worst.
Natalie MacLean (16:06):
Oh, okay.
Keith Grainger (16:07):
So reduced is completely the other end. Although sometimes paradoxically you can get some similar notes coming out. Maderized wine I say will smell of sherry, might smell of nuts, might smell a curry, but certainly might smell rancid. And sometimes of course heavily reduced wines can smell rancid as well, but technically speaking other ends of the spectrum.
Natalie MacLean (16:32):
Okay. And is Maderized wine when it’s faulted like that, does it also smell like cooked or old or fatigued?
Keith Grainger (16:39):
Yeah, of course we’re making madeiras go through a process where the wines are deliberately heated up. But while you’re talking about cooked, say some problems are on the increase and heat damaged wine, which can become Maderized wine, is a problem. And that certainly is where the wine tastes cooked. You could often tell it if a wine sealed with a cork, if the cork seems slightly raised in the bottle, the wine’s probably got too hot at some point in its lifecycle. Most likely when it’s been shipped sitting on the dockside or in the containers on the ship. And in these days when everyone’s trying to save energy and fuel, ships in many cases are getting cooler. People aren’t paying for air conditioned containers. The wine can actually get up to 40 degrees at sea in those containers so well over a hundred degrees farenheit.
Natalie MacLean (17:33):
Oh my goodness. And so could leaving a wine in your trunk of your car on a hot summer’s day matter it would it happen that quickly?
Keith Grainger (17:42):
Just ask my principal in Cyprus [laughter]. Distributing wide in Cyprus is not so easy, and quite often the salespeople not only selling the wine, they’re also delivering the wine, will pick it up one day, leave it in the car, i.e. pick it up on a Friday for delivery on Monday.
Natalie MacLean (18:02):
And then it’s cooked or could be
Keith Grainger (18:04):
It is cooked well and truly, whether truly, and then of course no one blames the delivery guy. They all blame the winery.
Natalie MacLean (18:11):
Of course. And just to go back, you mentioned Madeira, so that’s the fortified wine from southwest Portugal an island, its purposely cooked three to six times. So why again like Sherry, why is this desirable in Madeira and not in other wines?
Keith Grainger (18:26):
It’s down to the structure of the wine
Natalie MacLean (18:28):
Of the wine. Okay. Yeah.
Keith Grainger (18:30):
Madeira is this volcanic island just off quite, in fact it’s nearer Africa than Portugal, although it’s owned by Porto. But these are these big heavy structured wines. In fact, the idea of cooking the wine came by accident of course when the ships were getting be calm in the sun, nobody like us talking about the heat damage paradoxically. And they found the wine was better in the destination when they left the departure port.
Natalie MacLean (18:54):
Fascinating. And let’s go back to brettanomyces, which is part of the yeast family and often referred to by as the cool kids by brett, can make some smell like barnyard. You quoted someone as saying, a great Burgundy should smell like sh**.
Keith Grainger (19:11):
That is not my quote [laughter]
Natalie MacLean (19:13):
You were quoting somebody [laughter]
Keith Grainger (19:15):
I was quoting Anthony Hanson, a great Burgundy expert. And in the first edition of his book on Burgundy in 1982, he said, great burgundy smells like sh**. By the time he got the second edition, he realized that wasn’t really of the case and that the wines had been infected – they were not contaminated – because this is made with the wine by the actions of this rogue yeast brettanomyces.
Natalie MacLean (19:40):
And so, but still today some people consider that barnyard, euphemistically, the barnyard smell in Burgundy desirable. So what is it? Is it just a preference or is this truly a fault, or a taint or whatever?
Keith Grainger (19:55):
It depends where you’re coming from.
Natalie MacLean (19:57):
Okay.
Keith Grainger (19:57):
An umber of my colleagues say immediately they an objective taster. I Keith Granger, I am not an objective taster, I’m a subjective taster because we cannot be objective. It’s like trying to be honest. We strive to be, but we cannot be. We’re influenced by culture, by education, by trading, wherever you come from, what we grown up with, you name it. So to a New World winemaker, which our devices generally speaking is a major, major fault, be they from Australia, New Zealand, California to someone in France. Let me use the Rhone Valley as an example. When lots of the wines showed the compounds of brettanomyces it is part of the terroir. It is what to make this wine individual. So there is no black or white except to say to my mind a little bit adds a bit of spice, a little bit of – how should we put it – a little bit of edgyness makes the wine a little bit different. A lot makes the wine undrinkable. Back to my boundary.
Natalie MacLean (21:02):
Absolutely. And that is the case with a lot of things like a little bit of oak might be nice, but a lot of oak can mask the actual wine itself.
Keith Grainger (21:10):
The best analogy I can give is watching a comedian and this comedian is very risque and is going very near the line. It is highly amusing and then they go over the line and they just become crude.
Natalie MacLean (21:22):
Very good analogy. Love it. Excellent. Now a lot of people are concerned about sulfates. They think they’re allergic to them and so on. This is the preservative sulfur dioxide or SO2 that’s added to wine to give it a longer shelf life. And just so listeners know, sulfates exist in nature and are in all wines. Even if it says no sulfates added, it’s still there. But in large amounts, of course it can smell like rotten eggs. But should people worry about sulfates as much as they do?
Keith Grainger (21:52):
Okay. Firstly just need to distinguish between the nose of excess sulfur dioxide and sulfates and the reduced wine which are volatile sulfur compounds. So as again today I’m not going to go into the wiser wear force, but if a wine smells of rotten eggs, it’s got volatile sulfur compounds. It is reduced. If it smells of sulfur that’s like striking in a match or kind of do roast chestnuts on the coke braiser in the street, that smell of a burning coke that is excess sulfur dioxide. Now that is sloppy wine making. There is no doubt about it. The amount of sulfur dioxides that can go into any wine is regulated by law in every major market. The actual technical amount can vary it a bit from market to market, but it is regulated. The allowance in wine tends to be less than many other things people eat or drink without thinking about it. Orange juice could have sulfates added, dried fruit, sultanas raisins, et cetera.
Natalie MacLean (23:01):
And I’ve heard that. How do they compare it? A glass of orange juice has more sulfates in it than a whole entire bottle of wine.
Keith Grainger (23:07):
It can do. It can do. So should people be worried? First if you suffer, the answer is definitely yes because you can have problems. Generally speaking, authorities are trying to reduce the amount of sulfur in wine that the limits get reduced every decade or two. But I’m going to now fall out for the natural wine people and say that sulfur is the great antioxidant which we discussed oxidation, but antimicrobial agent as well. But the hard thing is that of all the sulfur dioxide that added to the wine, only part of it acts an antioxidant called free sulfur dioxide and a part of that as an antimicrobal agent. Now it starts to get very, very tricky, but people could say I produce my sulfur, and they could have still quite ready to be high levels of free sulfur dioxide. On the other hand, someone can say, I’ve got high sulfur levels, I’m trying to reduce it, but they’ve got low levels of free sulfur dioxide. So it is very, very tricky.
Natalie MacLean (24:14):
Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve heard, I don’t know, estimates that only really less than 5% of the population truly has an allergy to sulfates.
Keith Grainger (24:23):
Yeah, it’s probably more like 1%, but I’m not a medical person, so I don’t want to be quoted on that. Just one thing before we leave the sulfur though. So the part that is antimicrobial is what is called the molecular sulfur dioxide and the amount that works will depend on the pH that is called an acidity of the wine. So if you want to make a wine the way you can reduce sulfur, you need to keep your acid levels fairly high and your pH level is fairly low.
Natalie MacLean (24:54):
Because acids are natural preservative, so high acid wines will be less likely to be prone to those issues but also need less sulfates.
Keith Grainger (25:03):
Yeah, I remember quite recently I found in 1987 Riesling Cabernet from a friend of mine in Germany. And ’87 wasn’t a great year. This why I just hidden away. I brought it out and thought it would be shot to pieces, but because it wasn’t a very ripe vintage that acid levels were through the roof. The wine was wonderful.
Natalie MacLean (25:22):
Oh, that’s great. That’s great. A happy cellar discovery. But are people usually reacting to histamines in wine when they get that headache? I mean, too much wine period causes a headache, so let’s just be honest about that. But is it more of a histamine reaction than the sulfites?
Keith Grainger (25:37):
Alcohol causes problems. Sulfates can cause a problem. But biogenic amines of which histamine is the most important definitely can cause problems as well. So all of them.
Natalie MacLean (25:49):
Okay, and where did the histamines come from in wine? Where do they stem from?
Keith Grainger (25:53):
Okay, but this one, again, we are getting very, very technical. We are looking at actions of lactic acid bacteria on amino acids in the wine, but I can’t explain that as simple. I’m very careful to say there’s one of my colleagues always all true technic who you want to understand. I think sometimes you don’t need to understand, just have the basic. Our computer works because it works.
Natalie MacLean (26:17):
Sure, just turn it on. But are there certain wines that tend to have more histamines than others? People are asking me all the time I get these headaches, what can I avoid or what can I steer clear of to maybe reduce…
Keith Grainger (26:29):
Lots of sparkling wines can have quite high histamine nose? Definitely Proseccos and Champagnes, et cetera. But there are many, many others. It’s one of the areas where the industry is trying to move forward because the health risks from wine aren’t just from alcohol. There are other things as well.
Natalie MacLean (26:48):
Okay. And you mentioned Band-Aids before. Where does that come from or what is that?
Keith Grainger (26:53):
Sorry, I mentioned?
Natalie MacLean (26:54):
Band-aids. The smell of Band-Aids.
Keith Grainger (26:55):
Yeah. This is another brett compounds. So the barnyard is one, but there’s a compound called four e four fetal that gives the Band-Aid. Now what is interested is that both the barnyard compound, which phenol 4 ethylphenol and the bandaid compound phenol 4 ethylphenol are often present but in different proportions in wine, in normally quite a high level of phenol 4 ethylphenol. But beer, I love my beers as well, my craft beers. Some brewers actually love, which the vice beers and some of the lambic brewers from Belgium, for example, and even some Californian brewers. But the compound then tends to be more. So you don’t get that Band-Aid aroma on the beers.
Natalie MacLean (27:43):
Okay. Now you’ve written about lightstrike. It’s on your website right now as well. It’s really interesting. It can affect wines bottled in clear glass because they only filter out 10% of UVA, those damaging light, versus green bottles filter 50 to 90% brown bottles, maybe 90 to 99%.
Keith Grainger
You’ve done your homework.
Natalie MacLean
Yes. Well yeah, I feel like I’m in science class again in a good way. And it’s more likely to affect sparkling wines, white and rosé, whereas red are more protected by their own colour compounds or phenols.
Keith Grainger (28:16):
Phenols, yeah.
Natalie MacLean (28:16):
What does lightstrike smell like or look like?
Keith Grainger (28:20):
Back to our reduced compounds because it’s very closely related to reduced compound. Skunk, garlic, cut cabbage, marmite sometimes. I will say straight away, it’s one of the growing faults today. A number of faults are in decline, so the corkiness is in decline, but lightstrike is on the increase. A number of restaurants are going to, they’ve got the ultraviolet lights and their bottles of sparkling wine, Champagne in clear glass sitting under the light. The sparkling wines can be affected after eight minutes under an ultraviolet light.
Natalie MacLean (28:55):
Really? Oh my gosh, you didn’t know that. That’s incredible. Yeah, they usually have these out on display or you’ll see glass racks as you walk into the restaurant. It looks beautiful. That’s no good for the wines.
Keith Grainger (29:06):
Some Champagne producers who liked for their wise and clear glass use a cellophane wrap, a colour cellophane wrap which should not be taken off on any circumstances until the bottle’s cracked.
Natalie MacLean (29:18):
And Louis Roederer being the most famous one with Cristal, right?
Keith Grainger (29:21):
Yes, exactly. Yeah. So otherwise you’re going to get his horrible safe produced ethyl sulfide aromas. A number of Champagne producers are actually moving back to coloured glass in fact for their Rosés. Doesn’t look so attractive, but I’m all for it because it protects the wine.
Natalie MacLean (29:36):
Excellent. Yeah, I was interested to see that beautiful orange cellophane, which looks beautiful on the Cristal. It blocks 98% of UV light. We have to mention pyrazine. They smell like, is it the bell pepper family there? Yeah. Okay. Warmer climates. Are there certain wines that are more likely to suffer from them?
Keith Grainger (29:57):
Right. We’ve moved it to whole new ocean now. Pyrazine is there are many different types. So let’s say simply that they come from the grapes to start with. What they smell like depends on the pyrazine in question. So the one we normally think of and the oxy pyrene, I can abbreviate IBMP. The IMPB with pyrazine, and that’s the one which is the bell pepper, the green. Probably very highly desirable in the Sauvignon Blanc to a level. Less desirable maybe in a red wine. But just for example, some regions actually make a Padthaway, a Koonara in Australia, they’re reds, their Cabernets are often very green. And something I find quite distinctive and I quite like. If someone gives me a wine to taste blind, pick up that greenness. I always hazardous guess a Koonara. Sometimes, right. Sometimes not. So more likely the cool climate in that case. But there are other pyrazines that are false. So there’s one I would give this his full name, 3-Alkyl-2-Methoxypyrazines. It’s what gives a so-called lay debug taint in wine. If you get lady bugs on a cluster of grapes and they stay in during the crushing, the wine will smell of cilantro, coriander, marzipan, waxy. And there’s another one 2 MDMP. They actually start tasting like fungus and you could confuse the wine for a cold wine, but pyrazine we’ll say are world unto themselves.
Natalie MacLean (31:27):
Okay. Okay, cool. Now time has flown. So I did want to, before we wrap up and we’ll get your details as to where people can get your book and so on, I have kept this. I’ve had this wine faults kit in my basement in three layers of wrap because it smells so badly. So I’m unwrapping it from, oh my God I can smell it already, the Ziploc bag, then a bubble wrap, and then finally I have it in this. Oh my god, I feel like I’m going down to the bad cellars
Keith Grainger (32:00):
Don’t get too close to me.
Natalie MacLean (32:01):
Yeah, you can’t get far enough away. But I just want to show this and we’ll put a link to it in the show notes. It’s the wine fault aromas. And I wanted your opinion if this is a useful tool to learn about wine faults for those who do want to go in depth more or studying for particular exam because it has an aroma wheel, a stinky aroma wheel. And then inside, I’ll just describe it for those who are listening, it has all these vials, vile vials, of all these smelly stuff and a card like it’s got cabbage and skunk and everything else. And you can open these vials, God forbid, and smell them to be able to better detect the aromas. Now what do you think of something like this?
Keith Grainger (32:43):
The kit is of use, like all these things its use is restricted by the fact, of course, you’re not detected these in a wine environment. You are detected in an odour environment, so they won’t be quite the same. But is of use because one you’ve got there is from Le Nez du Vin there is another company who makes aroma compounds you can use pertaining your wines with. They tend to be more expensive, but they have a compounds including TDA and that Band Aid, et cetera. But I think you need to be fairly seriously investigating faults to warrant buying these.
Natalie MacLean (33:24):
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve kept it in my basement, so I haven’t been that serious about it at all. But I just thought it was intriguing because at one point I was writing about faults in a highly nonscientific way and just thought this might be useful. Anyway, I’m going to quit the rustling. So Keith, this has been fascinating. We clearly could have a whole course in this. Is there anything that we haven’t covered that you wanted to mention?
Keith Grainger (33:49):
Yeah, just some personal things probably.
Natalie MacLean (33:51):
Absolutely
Keith Grainger (33:52):
I strongly disagree that wine should be assessed using a point scoring system. And quite often then we could have the stupid situation of a point scoring system. A wine’s got a fault, but if you accumulated your points, the fault or the level of the fault is negated by using the points. But in any event, I think we should look on wine as an art, not as a science. And if you go to see a play, if you go to see a concert, if you go to see I love opera. I wouldn’t say that Tosca is a 99 point opera and Jonas Cal was a 98 point tenor generally, but 96 points off. That is absolutely crazy. You say exactly how much you enjoy it.
A little trick maybe for your viewers, for those who are not viewing, you can have a slight problem here. My best wine gadget.
Natalie MacLean
Lots of people swear by various cork screws and obviously Coravan and things like that. Here is my best buying gadget. And remember I’m in England. This is a two pence coin, or we could have a one pence coin, but you’ve got your nickles and dimes. You need a coin with some copper…
Natalie MacLean (35:08):
Copper, okay.
Keith Grainger (35:10):
… in the manufacturer
Natalie MacLean
A penny
Keith Grainger
When you get a wine that smells reduced – the skunk, the garlic, the onion – put the coin in the glass of wine, swirl it round, and after a minute or so the wine will taste much less reduced. It will take a bit of the flavour out as well. It must be said. And just another little chip on that, if you get a wine that is badly corked and tainted and you can’t send it back, you’ve had it in your cellar for 10 years, try getting some of we call cling wrap, I think you call Saran Wrap. Crunch up maybe a square metre of it into a glass of wine. Put it in there, swirl it round, round, round, and after about three minutes it would’ve taken some of that cork taint out of the wine. Really, not all of it, but some of it.
Natalie MacLean (35:57):
Those are fascinating tricks. I love those tips and tricks and we’ll put them all in the show notes as well. That is great. Keith, anything else you’d like to mention before we ask where we can find you online and all that sort of thing?
Keith Grainger (36:09):
Yeah, just once again slightly off topic. I read where we do it out internet to and fro before this, you asked if I could share a bottle of wine of any person outside the wine world, who would it be? And the person I could give is probably quite a surprise. It’s a composer and conductor and trumpet player called Ennio Morricone. And Ennio Morricone, Italian as you can tell from the name, is perhaps most famous for writing the scores for all the spaghetti westerns, the Lee Van Cleef films, et cetera.
Natalie MacLean (36:43):
Is that The Good, The Bad and The Ugly?
Keith Grainger (36:44):
You’re spot on actually. And what I loved about his music, he integrated classic rock, other instruments, all sorts of things and very expressive. A lot of people say John Williams is the best movie composer. I think John Williams is much more sort of one dimensional than Ennio Morricone. So Ennio, an Italian wine lover as well. And Italians I love because they are crazy people and at best they make some of the craziest wines in the world. At worse, they make some of the most tross wines, but the top wines are absolutely brilliant. But I want to give him a French wine to taste, actually were to be a Chateau Haut-Brion, but not the red wine. The white wine Chateau Haut-Brion Blanc, which is very rare. And I tasted just a couple of years ago actually was at a dinner. I was lucky enough to be at Chateau Latour having a dinner had they served the Chateau Haut-Brion Blanc. I sitting just across from me was Oz Clark, the English wine writer. We both picked up the glass at the same time and this was one of those not oh my God this wine is off moment, but oh my god, this is a wine of the soul moment. I’ve got a shiver going down my spine.
Natalie MacLean (37:54):
Wow.
Keith Grainger (37:54):
So I think would really appreciate that.
Natalie MacLean (37:57):
Yes, as well he should. Yeah, that’s wonderful. I love that. So Keith, your book is Wine Faults and Flaws. Where can people find it, buy it, read more about it? There it is.
Keith Grainger (38:08):
So here we are again. Wine Faults and Flaws: A Practical Guide. Firstly you can, I’m going to say don’t in minute, get it on Amazon. Okay. Now I say don’t because Amazon take 55% discount for my publisher. They pay me 55% less in royalties. So when they’re giving you 10% discount, don’t think they’re doing you a favour. I’ve actually got nothing against Amazon. I’ve got a lot of stuff of them. My publisher is Wiley. I’m not sure if Wiley, you’re just about to see it on screen.
Natalie MacLean (38:37):
Yes. They’re very much into the educational books.
Keith Grainger (38:39):
Yes. They’re very much into educational academic books. So their website is wiley.com.
Natalie MacLean (38:46):
We’ll put that in the show notes.
Keith Grainger (38:46):
So yeah, you can buy it on that quite easily. And it’s not a cheap book as you’ll gather. I’m not even going to mention the price because I’m embarrassed, but…
Natalie MacLean (38:57):
Oh that’s alright. It’s comprehensive. It’s meant to be a significant reference book.
Keith Grainger (39:01):
Let’s put it this way. The price of an expensive bottle of wine is more than the price of the book.
Natalie MacLean (39:07):
There you go. Put it in context.
Keith Grainger (39:09):
Exactly.
Natalie MacLean (39:10):
Absolutely. And where can we find you online, Keith?
Keith Grainger (39:13):
You can find me on my own website, which as usual, never keep quite as up to date as I would wish because there’s always more money making opportunities out there. So www.keithgranger.com, that’s K-E-I-T-H-G-R-A-I-N-G-E-R.com.
Natalie MacLean (39:29):
Absolutely. And we will link to that.
Keith Grainger (39:30)
There’s a contact page on there. You could contact me through that. And always interested in people’s anecdotes as well. Wines they may have tried not sure was at faulty, wasn’t faulty. Let’s get an opinion. So just give an example, back to our brett. Chateau Musar from Lebanon is a wine which historically built its reputation of those farm yard staple notes and now people seek out the old bottles. Because that’s why they’re important.
Natalie MacLean (39:58):
Yeah, so distinctive. Yeah, I actually like it. So I guess I’m a fan of brett. Thank you so much, Keith. We appreciate your time, your expertise, and your patience with non-scientific nerds like me. It’s very helpful to have this background because it’s a big part of wine and enjoying it and knowing what to avoid as well. So thank you for this.
Keith Grainger (40:18):
Thank you so much and hope to talk to you sometime and to meet you soon.
Natalie MacLean (40:22):
Absolutely. Let’s continue the conversation there.
Keith Grainger (40:25):
Thank you, Natalie. Thank you everybody. Enjoy your wines.
Natalie MacLean (40:28):
Bye-Bye. Cheers.
(40:34):
Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our chat with Keith. Here are my takeaways. Number one, Keith’s explanation of descriptors like musty attic, rotten eggs, and Band-Aids was very helpful. Different wine faults can have very different characteristic odours and flavours, which can tip you off to their presence. Number two, a wine’s packaging can make it more susceptible to faults. For example, wine in clear bottles are more prone to lightstrike while certain types of screw caps can cause more oxidation than others. And it’s that liner under the cap that makes the difference. So look for the white ones, not the silver ones. Number three, his suggestions on ways that you can fix a faulted wine at home rather than throwing it out or returning it were very clever. For example, you can swirl cling wrap to reduce cork taint and use a copper coin for reduced wine. And number four, he also cleared up my mistake and belief that oxygen can pass from the outside through a cork closure. Any oxygen that comes into the wine was in the cork in the first place and is slowly released into the wine.
In the show notes, you’ll find the full transcript of my conversation with Keith, links to his website and books, the video versions of these conversations on Facebook and YouTube live, and where you can order my book online now no matter where you live. You can also find a link to take a free online wine and food pairing class with me. It’s called The Five Wine and Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner and How to Fix Them Forever. That’s at nataliemaclean.com/class. And all of this is in the show notes at nataliemaclean.com/269.
Email me if you have a sip, tip, question, or if you’ve read my book or are in the process of reading it at [email protected]. If you have suggestions on how to improve this podcast or guests I should consider interviewing, please let me know. I’d love to hear from you. If you missed episode 92, go back and take a listen. I chat about unusual wine and cheese pairings with author Laura Werlin. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.
Laura Werlin (42:52):
What you’re looking for, ideally, when you are pairing is one of three things. The way I define them is that you have what I call Switzerland. So you have this neutral pairing and you have the cheese and you have the wine and you have them together and they’re fine. They taste fine, nothing wrong. They play well in the sandbox together. And then you have what I call the Titanic. So as we all know, that didn’t end very well. And so you have the cheese and you have the wine, and together they make these other flavours that you kind of wish you hadn’t had. Luckily, that doesn’t happen very often.
Natalie MacLean (43:27):
What are the bad flavours, just the clashing or others?
Laura Werlin (43:30):
Yeah. Well, it can be, for instance, soy. So the same kind of cheese that you’re eating, the soft ripened cheese. With that kind of cheese, the rind is the first thing that starts to deteriorate when it’s going downhill. So you will taste that and taste it with wine and at first it might taste fine, but then all of a sudden it kind of goes south.
Natalie MacLean (43:56):
You won’t want to miss next week when we chat with Vanessa Price, the author of the bestselling book, Big Macs and Burgundy Wine Pairings for the Real World. She’s also the wine expert for the Today Show. She joins us from her home in New York City.
If you like this episode, please email or tell one friend about it this week. Especially someone who’d be interested in the wines, tips and, stories we shared. It’s easy to find my podcast. Just tell them to search for Natalie MacLean Wine on their favorite podcast app. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week, perhaps a wine that has aged to faultless perfection.
You don’t want to miss one juicy episode of this podcast, especially the secret full-bodied bonus episodes that I don’t announce on social media. So subscribe for free now at nataliemaclean.com/subscribe. Meet me here next week. Cheers.
