BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Wine How to tell if wine has gone bad?

I opened up a bottle of chardonnay yesterday, and now I'm having another glass -- but the wine seems to taste different today.

My first thought was that it somehow went bad, but I'm pretty sure that's not it. (It's probably just the spicy food I had right before I started drinking.)

Still, that first thought make me start wondering: How do you tell if your wine really has gone bad? And, how long does that typically take?

Wine will always taste different day to day once it's opened. It's oxidizing because air was let into the bottle. Wine will never "taint" - it just will keep tasting less and less good. When it becomes "undrinkable" is completely up to your taste buds. Some people won't drink it after the first day - some people will drink it a week later.

There are many devices on the market to help minimize oxidation. They work to varying degrees. The best technique is to decant the wine into a smaller bottle, cork it and put it in the fridge. That way there is "naturally" as little air as possible against the wine and the cold temperature keeps the wine in stasis as much as possible.

If you only drink a glass a night you can also buy half bottles rather than full bottles so that you finish the bottle more quickly.

I've been thinking I would do exactly that -- good idea.

Thanks for the info, Lisa!

We use compressed nitrogen to keep the wine from oxidizing too soon. You just spray the nitrogen into the wine bottle and put the cork back on. It's easy enough and it works fine for us as long as we drink the wine within a few days. If left too long, it will oxidize past our point of toleration.

It's true, trying to save wine for more than a day usually ends up with an unsatisfactory taste. As you noticed, oxidization effects things very quickly.

Have you considered buying half bottles for those occasions where you would only like one or two glasses? It's a good way to save that excess wine.

I used to buy my wine in the bag type dispenser, it seemed to last longer and retain its flavor better.

"How do you tell if your wine really has gone bad? And, how long does that typically take?"

Wine can go bad surprisingly quickly depending on how it is made and how it is stored.

The two best ways to tell if your wine has gone bad are appearance and smell. The third way is taste, but that means you have to taste something that has gone bad.

Typically with a white wine the color will darken on its way to being bad. The typical aroma of a white gone bad is perhaps surprisingly not vinegar but rather sherry.

Wine is a food product, and can be "spoiled" in several ways. First, never store your wine in a hot area - this includes your car, in racking over the fridge, in a hot kitchen, and when being shipped via a non-refridgerated method, etc. you can easily "cook" your wine that way. Cooked wine will taste like stewed fruit, and can have pruny characteristics. It won't hurt you, but won't taste like it should. You will also encounter wine which is corked. This means the wine has been spoiled via a chemical reaction between the cork and various chemical agents, such as bleach used in cleaning the winery. Once you have tasted/smelled a corked wine, you'll never forget it. The level of corkiness varies, as does the ability of the taster to detect it, but will have scents ranging from wet dog to moldy newspaper. The wine will be dull tasting, no vibrant flavors and at the worst end, be totatlly undrinkable. It doesn't have any health effects, you just won't enjoy it.