Can Wine Go Bad? - SaratogaWine.com

All right, so today we're looking at the question of how do wines go bad or how do you know if a wine's go bad or what makes a wine go bad because we get that question a lot from people that they think a wine has gone bad and really what it is is the wine just isn't to their taste. So what actually is a bad wine? How do you know if it's bad and what can really make it go bad? Great wine. Better prices. Delivered right to your door. SaratogaWine.com Let's take a look at the three factors individually about how they damage wine and how you'll know if your wine's been damaged by it. They are temperature, humidity, and light. So heat is one of the quickest ways to damage wine. If you store your wine in an environment that's too warm or the heat fluctuates between high and low, it's going to cause the wine to actually cook. Now what you're going to notice when you open that bottle of wine again, you're going to go through it and see dark colors. It's going to be more brown than red, especially if it's a red wine. And if it's a white wine, it's going to be more brown than yellow or kind of a clear if it's like a Pinot Grigio or a Suave or something like that. So you'll notice also on the nose, you'll get this kind of walnutty or almond-y characteristic on the nose. The alcohol will be all that you smell really when it's more dominant because all the fruit has been cooked off. The wine's going to become real thin. All the fruit flavors you were expecting are going to disappear. And basically all the reasons you bought that wine, they're going to be gone. You'll notice it right away when you pour it into the glass. You'll see the color isn't there. It doesn't look like a... I always say that the wines should look like gemstones when they're poured. They should have a nice brilliant color to them in the glass, no matter whether red or white, but they should have that kind of a sparkle to them. Wines have been cooked, especially by heat. You won't see that. It'll be very dull. It'll be very brown. And it happens as wines get older too. That doesn't necessarily mean they're gone bad, but you'll see that that happens. Now the second thing that wines can get damaged by is from a lack of humidity. So if you're storing something and the air gets too dry, what happens is the actual cork dries out. So when the cork dries out, the seal that's protecting the wine from the oxygen outside leaks in. So the air leaks in, oxygen leaks in. And when that happens, the chemical reaction is oxidation. The wine actually oxidizes. And what that does again to the flavors and the aromas, they start to degrade. Now you can see some of that because as a wine ages, there is some chemical reaction with oxygen that the cork allows in slowly over time. But when there's a leak or there's a flaw in the cork itself, you'll get an oxidized wine that's flawed. And if you store it for a long time, it'll just get worse. So again, aromas will come off, flavors become off, and that will really degrade to the point where it's undrinkable. And as soon as you smell it, trust your nose. If it smells really bad, don't put that in your mouth. You don't need to do that. Now the final thing that can damage wine is exposure to light over a long period of time. That can degrade the wine as well. Now that doesn't happen as long. That's why you see bottles have a lot of the green colored bottles help to protect the wine. But you don't want to store it in bright sunlight. And also don't buy your wine from a wine store or wine supplier that stores a lot of their product, especially wine, in their front windows where the sunlight is damaging it. So that would help, that would degrade the wine. And you're not going to get, even though it may not have gone completely bad where you can't drink it, you're not going to get that great flavor you're looking for from that bottle of wine. But when you store this in a kind of a cool dark place, when it's stored properly, your wines can last for a lot of years without spoiling. But keep in mind that doesn't apply to all wines. Some wines are designed to drink now. Other wines, especially red wines, some sweeter white wines that have high acidity, they're designed to age. But most wines that you're buying in a, let's say, under $30 category aren't really meant to be aged a long time. So you can store them for, you know, even up to a year or so. But even after that time, those wines will start to lose some of that bright gemstone-like characteristic, that bright fruit that you're expecting from a real fresh bottle of wine in that category. Now if you're spending a little bit more money, let's say you're buying $50 to $100 Bordeaux's and you want to age those for five to ten years, check out the reviews on that wine. See what the, see what the reviewers are saying the life of that wine is that you can age it for. But for the most part, most wines are meant to be drunk within the next six to months to a year or two years, depending on the style of wine. Now the question is, once the wine is opened, how long will it last? Most wines, once they're open, unless you're using some sort of a sealing system or using a Coravin system, which just takes out one glass at a time, you really, once you've taken the cork out of a bottle, you've got a few days before that wine starts to degrade. Now it's not going to become undrinkable, but if you wait a week, you'll definitely notice that from the time you opened it to a week later, that wine quality has really gone down. So we encourage you that if you're going to try and only have a glass of a wine over the next week or two and you want to use a bottle, invest in a Coravin system, something that'll put an inert gas in there and keep the oxygen off the wine so it doesn't degrade in flavor or in color or an aroma so that the glass you pour a week from now is as good and as enjoyable as the one you poured when you first tapped into that bottle. So that's a couple of quick questions or quick answers on the wines, the degradation, how to know if they're bad, do they go bad? Absolutely. If I open a bottle, how do I know if it's bad versus my personal taste? Those are some of the things you can look for and just be careful with your own personal taste because if it's something you're not familiar with and you buy a wine that's maybe six or eight years older, you may think it's gone bad, but what it's done is it's just part of the aging process. If you're used to drinking really bright new wines and you buy an eight or a 10 year old wine, you'll see a difference, but that's some of the beauty of that wine is seeing how it ages over that time as well. We hope that answers some of your questions. So if you have another question you'd like us to answer, feel free to drop that in the comments and we'll try to get an answer to that for you. Don't forget to like and subscribe and shop on SaratogaWine.com. We're going to find over 30,000 products to choose from. Appreciate your time.