The Auswine Forum

Stealing from another thread - How to know when a wine is bad/off?

Don’t ask my mother-in-law! Opened a bottle of Penfolds 1994 St Henri to celebrate a long weekend here in the US. Decanted it. Beautiful color, not looking anywhere near its age. But corked. Back to the cellar and pulled the corks on a 1994 Lindeman’s Limestone Ridge and a 2003 Red Nectar Shiraz (just in case). Both bottles were fine (Lindy decanted). So I lined up all three and let everyone taste through them to decide which one they wanted with their BBQ ribs. Mother-in-law picks the St Henri! I tell her its faulty and that the moldy wet newspaper smell is typical of a corked wine. She says “Well that’s still the wine I prefer.” At 85 I figure she gets to drink what she wants so she even got the half empty bottle to take home. The woman has never met a wine she didn’t like. Miranda's response was "Well she doesn't have much of a sense of smell".

I have to give her some credit though. If you got past the TCA, the St Henri did have the best structure of the three wines and would have been the best by a long shot if it wasn’t “faulty”. Now I know who to give my corked wine to if I can't get a replacement.

Mike

Funny you mention the St Henri, I opened a '73 last weekend and the first sniff made me think the wine was faulty. I decanted it just the same and not long after the aromas of spice developed and the wine really open up. It had definate age and the fruit had mellowed, but was still grippy and silky smooth. Older Penfolds wines do have a definate aromatic characteristic of mustiness, which I also found in a '83 Grange recently.

It is funny that I experienced very much same thing. I opened 97 Command Shiraz and initial sniff, thought wines was oxidised. But I decided to see whether it will get better after more than an hour of breathing. Sure enough it started to open up and got better about 30mins later.

Nope, this was not a quick sniff and discard. The St Henri was decanted about an hour before we began lunch and I kept coming back to it over about 3 hours. In the end it was simply poured back into the cleaned bottle and sent home with mother-in-law.

Mike