Bad wine, good?

Hi folks. I'm a newbie, just joined after posting a wine related thread in a binary food group. Never though about looking for a wine group. Here's my story. While turning my bottles the other night I noticed a bottle that had leaked. I knew it was bad when I pulled out the cork (it came out way too easy) and took a small sip. OK, I said, no good. My wife was preparing to steam some mussels and I told her, why not use the wine instead of water? Mussels came out great. Then I began to think, should I have used bad wine to steam? I posed this question to my sister in Houston who is, along with her husband, a wine expert. She replied: "One thing that can make a wine go bad is exposure to air and growth of bacteria. If you don't mind steaming your food with bacteria laden wine...go for it."

A reply from the food group said steaming kills any bacteria, so there is no danger, which makes sense. Any opinions from this group? Thanks much Eddie in San Jose

Reply to
Eddie
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Salut/Hi Eddie,

Michael Pronay has got it spot on, but I'll add my 2ps worth anyway.

le/on Thu, 06 Jan 2005 04:17:02 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

Welcome.

Yup, that happens, though the fact of leaking doesn't _necessarily_ mean the wine is bad. If I can - sort of - explain...

If the cork made a perfect seal, no wine would leak out, and more importantly, no air would ever come in either. However, I remember a publication from Christie's wine auctions, which shows that wine levels more or less signficantly below the bottom of the cork is _normal_ for old wines. So, taking the logical conclusion, some amount of leakage past the cork has to be considered as normal, since these bottles would originally have been filled correctly. The only circumstances when it won't happen, is when the wine is stored in a completely unchanging temperature, as it is temperature variations that drive the leaking.

In the normal way of things, therefore, a small leakage is normal and could be argued to be desirable (this touches on a "hot potato" relative to aging wines under screwcaps) as it could help to power the maturation of the wine.

So, resuming, it is more or less normal for a very small amount of wine to leak out past or through the cork, during long aging. What isn't normal is for there to be enough leakage to mark the bottle. However, the fact that wine has leaked out doesn't _necessarily_ mean that air has got in yet, nor by any manner of means does it imply that the wine will be spoiled, though it might be.

took a small sip.

Again, the fact that the cork came out too easily is confirmation that the cork was (to use a technical term) buggered. However, I've had quite a number of such bottles in my misspent youth and middle age, which have not shown any sign of fault. A really badly buggered cork can be very hard to remove, as it slips into the bottle when you try to drive a corkscrew into it! By the way, don't make the mistake of equating a buggered cork with a corked wine. The two have only one thing in common, the wine bottle was closed with a cork!! (grin).

As long as you weren't persuading yourself that the wine wasn't good simply because the cork was buggered! That happens too.

Hey.... "bad" in this context means what? As Michael said, a loose cork may mean the wine is oxidised, but that doesn't necessarily make it undrinkable. Aging a wine has long been held to be the result of slow controlled oxidation (though this is now contested, and in fact may not be true). Certainly tiny traces of oxygen don't do significant harm to wine. I'd also want to add that I've never heard of a wine with a leaky cork turning to vinegar - although many an old wive's tale claim the contrary. It's simply not possible. The amount of air that would need to get in is simply huge, I did the calculation once, and iirc it would need several _gallons_ of air to convert all the alcohol from a bottle of wine into acetic acid. And in any case, this wouldn't happen unless a bacterium called "acetobacter" were present.

I'm afraid she's not quite right. Firstly almost all bacteria are killed by contact with alcohol (acetobacter isn't, of course, in the concentrations usually found in wine, or you couldn't get vinegar). While exposure to air and the presence of acetobacter will turn a wine to vinegar, I strongly suspect it would be impossible for this to happen in a bottle, and in any case the wine hasn't "gone bad", it has turned to vinegar - which is quite a different thing.

In absence of acetobacter, and after VERY long exposure to moderate amounts of oxygen, wine does turn bad - loosely speaking. It tastes nasty and smells revolting. I have had a couple of wines like that in my life. Many wine lovers have had a wine which has "died". It smells of ditches, or sewage. But I very much doubt if the wine would do you harm.

As for your sisters emotive statement - I quote - "If you don't mind steaming your food with bacteria laden wine...go for it" Speaking kindly, that's inaccurate (And I am afraid that your opinion of your sister's expertise may also be slightly inaccurate). Firstly, the fact that the wine tasted slightly less good than normal - if it had tasted truly horrid, you wouldn't have thought of steaming with it - shows that the wine WASN'T laden with bacteria - I repeat that nearly all bacteria are killed by wine! Any that survive would be killed by being brought to the boil. So I agree with Michael on this. She has fallen into the trap of hysterical fear of bacteria.

(I hope she has never had children, for her sake. All those nasty bugs about. Bleurgh - kissing, touching someone - what a horrible thought).

Hope that helped a bit, Eddie.

Reply to
Ian Hoare

Welcome. As Michael and Ian have already addressed the salient points in your post, I will not persue that, as I agree with both.

However, I would like to ask about your statement, "While turning my bottles ... " Many red wines throw sediment as they age. It is generally best to let sleeping bottles lie. That sediment falls to one side of the bottle as a deposit. When you serve the wine, you want to separate that sediment from the wine as well as is possible, with either your cautious pouring, or decanting. Turning the bottles stirs up the deposit(s) and, at best, forces it to filter back through the wine to attain the lowest level in the bottle. I like to leave the bottles in position in the cellar, and even when I move them about (as little as is possible to accommodate new wines, and help with my cataloging) keep the lable at the top, rather like the whitewash mark on Port bottles. I will then stand the bottle in the cellar for many hours (days?), before I pour it, to allow much of this sediment to slide down the bottle to the bottom. Now, inspecting the capsules is a good thing, for, as you found out, corks can and do leak.

Hope this concept of keeping the bottles in one orientation for their cellar experience doesn't lead to a flame-war, but so be it.

In a similar thread, "Wine Gone Bad?" or similar, I recounted my encounter with a 1955 Taylor Port with a bad cork, and the surprising results. I STILL have not actually tasted a '55 Taylor Vintage! :-{

Hunt

Reply to
Hunt

One last thing: Julia Child said that one shouldn't cook with a wine they wouldn't drink. I mean, let's say you have a really corked bottle of wine...would you want your food to taste corked? I've never actually tried it, so I don't know if the wet cardboard flavor passes along- anyone? I know it can be heartbreaking to just toss an entire bottle of wine away, but sometimes it's for the best. And I am in no way guarding against bacteria here. Just a taste thing. e.

Reply to
winemonger

"Eddie" skrev i melding news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Turning bottles? What for? Well, if that is important to you, then go on - but that certainly is not important for the bottles... They are better off undisturbed. Anders

Reply to
Anders Tørneskog

Emily,

As to not cooking with a corked wine, see this link:

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I don't always do it, I throw away my share of corked wine, but I do occasionally use; I find that to date I haven't run across corked odors. Now, I don't use corked wines say in a stew where it's added partway thru a simmer. But in reduced sauces at high temps (or Sue's recipe I reference in that thread) I haven't detected TCA yet.

Reply to
DaleW

Any time we happen to have any wine left (usually not on purpose) we set it aside for cooking. We will also cook with a wine that's not quite right when the bottle is opened. We feel that our food has been given the sort of flavor we intended and have never felt the taste of the food spoiled by day old or even weeks old wine.

Reply to
Rick

snipped

snipped

Eddie, why are you turning your bottles? This is the second time in a week I have read of someone doing this. All you are doing is stirring up sediment in the bottle. Bottles do not need turning.

Ron Lel

Reply to
Ron Lel

"Ron Lel" wrote in news:mXkDd.107288$ snipped-for-privacy@news-server.bigpond.net.au:

Another thing that this thread has brought to mind, I have had bottles with obvious leakage through the cork which were unscathed (or at least not appearantly) and delicious. Other storage factors and degree of leakage, age of wine etc. FWIW the ones that I have had that worked were relatively young and probably lost wine due to some heat problems leading to premature maturity (if that is even possible!)

Reply to
jcoulter

For those with a strong need to read about this issue, there is a recent, long and controversial thread on the Parker forum:

or

I'd highly recommend reading, of course, since I am an irrelevant contributor.

M.

Reply to
Michael Pronay

I'm surprised that Michael didn't comment on the issue of "turning" bottles. There is absolutely _no_ reason to turn bottles during aging. Simply leave them on their sides with the label up and resist the compulsion to fondle them needlessly. When you plan to serve the wine you should probably decant it or serve it from a bottle cradle if it has thrown any sediment.

Tom S

Reply to
Tom S

Now, cooking with good wine that is a few days old is another thing entirely. I do that quite often (ok, not really often. we don't often not finish a bottle!) I had heard about someone who poured all the great last bits of wine into a big vinegar jug, creating the finest red wine vinegar in town. Don't know if that's urban legend, though.

Reply to
winemonger

Salut/Hi snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net,

le/on 6 Jan 2005 21:17:01 -0800, tu disais/you said:-

I've been doing that for several years - 8 at least. Modesty (ahem) ands lack of comprehensive comparison (plus I don't much like the taste of vinegar) forbids me from claiming that it's the _best_ in town, though with only 300 on the electoral roll, that's certainly possible.

Certainly not legend that you can make good vinegar from the dregs of good wine.

Reply to
Ian Hoare

Salut/Hi Tom S,

le/on Fri, 07 Jan 2005 03:06:08 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

Don't be such a spoil sport, Tom, half the pleasure in having them is to give them a good fondle from time to time. All the true wine lovers I've known have this need to go down into the cellar, and stroke the current favourite lovingly from time to time - without turning it of course.

Reply to
Ian Hoare

Salut/Hi Michael Pronay,

Thanks very much for the headsup

le/on 7 Jan 2005 01:03:16 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

I'm not sure what this last sentence is about, as I didn't see a contribution from you in that thread, relevant or otherwise.

It was a very interesting thread, and there are two things I took from it.

  1. That even under screwcaps there is a small but measurable oxygen ingress. and
  2. That more people than I expected were in favour of screwcaps.

What the study lacked, IMO was any information about the temperature stability or otherwise of the stored bottles whose performance was being measured. I am quite certain that this is of crucial importance, especially in the case of corks.

I'm tempted to join, if only to make that point!

Reply to
Ian Hoare

] Salut/Hi Tom S, ] ] le/on Fri, 07 Jan 2005 03:06:08 GMT, tu disais/you said:- ] ] >

] >I'm surprised that Michael didn't comment on the issue of "turning" bottles. ] >There is absolutely _no_ reason to turn bottles during aging. Simply leave ] >them on their sides with the label up and resist the compulsion to fondle ] >them needlessly. When you plan to serve the wine you should probably decant ] >it or serve it from a bottle cradle if it has thrown any sediment. ] ] Don't be such a spoil sport, Tom, half the pleasure in having them is to ] give them a good fondle from time to time. All the true wine lovers I've ] known have this need to go down into the cellar, and stroke the current ] favourite lovingly from time to time - without turning it of course. ]

Hi Ian, Tom -

You guys are waaay too sure of yourselves. Fondling aside -- and I think it would be more appropriate if you kept these habits to yourself in future, Ian; no one needs to know about yer fondling yer favorite! -- there _may_ be a reason to turn the bottles... :)

Here's the thing. The cellar here in Normandy has a cieling of wooden lattes and mud, which supports some tonnes of grain, before a porous -- well, rotten -- wood layer and old hay above. All this provides dreamy insulation, but at the cost of a slow but constant rain of mud, mouse droppings and grain bits finely milled into a sticky red powder. So much for keeping the labels up. Within a few months you'd never know what you were drinking.

But labels down is a problem too. In all but the highest summer the cave has a humidity that -- well, I never measured it so I don't know exactly how high it is, but say 90% -- causes streams of water to run off the bottles. And the red gunk, as it happens, is a powerful glue solvent. (I've often thought of bottling it for those folks endlessly trying to soak labels off). The net result: within a few months you'd never know what you were drinking.

And the solution is... you guessed it! :)

[Before the samaritans chime in here, I don't really turn bottles. Once in a while I fondle them, in the process rubbing off most of the gunk, but mostly they just get grubbier and grubbier. Which actually impresses some people! :)]

-E

Reply to
Emery Davis

Right you are, Ian. When the temp hits 115 F on my lower patio, I retreat to the cellar and check my bottle taqs for penmanship, spelling errors, etc. I limit myself to just fondling the capsules and the neck tags though. After a few hours at 55 F, I find the heat almost refreshing... well, I did say ALMOST, didn't I? :-)

Hunt

Reply to
Hunt

In article , notareal@address. com says... [SNIP]

This might be a wonderful time to use cellar-tracking software and carefully log the exact location by bin/row/column. "Hey, hon, if this is bin AA-24, we must be drinking the '65 Ch Latour!"

Hunt

Reply to
Hunt
Reply to
Michael Pronay

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