[MUSIC] I've got another short exercise that we can do. Let's make up some standards to practice smelling a couple of common wine faults. Remember, the bottles that I had you save from module 1? I said put the cork back in and keep them. So, those are the wines that we're going to be using for this session. We're also going to be opening a new bottle of each of those two wines to blend with the old bottles. So I'm going to set these aside and then we'll talk about how I want you to pour your glasses. Let me go ahead and run through the supplies that you'll need for this module. I've got a set of teaspoon, tablespoons. I've got a small measuring cup that measures in ounces. I've got some of my handy plastic covers. I've got a bottle of sherry and a bottle of white wine vinegar. And remember, you're going to go ahead and bring out your partially used bottle from the first module. This wine should have been open a week or two by now. Longer is better, if it's been open a month or two, that's fine. If you drank it all, then you're going to have to get another one and open it and let a couple of weeks go by. In other words, you want a stale bottle of wine to use for this exercise. And you want to also open a fresh bottle of that same wine. So the first flight that we're going to do is the white flight. And the first glasses, I've pre-poured these for you. In the first glass, I've poured two ounces of the wine that you've just opened, the fresh one. In the second glass, I've poured one ounce of the fresh wine that you've just opened and once ounce of the wine that you saved from two or three weeks ago. In the third glass, I've poured two ounces of the wine that you've saved from two or three weeks ago. And now I'm going to go ahead and pour a tablespoon of a fino sherry in that glass as well. [SOUND] Or so. [LAUGH] And the fourth glass, I'd like you to pour two ounces of the wine that you saved from a few weeks ago plus one quarter tablespoon of some white wine vinegar. I'll try to be more careful this time. [SOUND] Okay, I've pre-calculated that. So that's about the right concentration of acetic acid, or vinegar in wine, that would sort of come up to your threshold level. So just going ahead and smelling these with you, wines one through four. Let me talk about what you might find as you smell through your flight. Glass number one, of course, is going to be fresh and fruity. Yeah, I remember that from the last time we smelled it. Go ahead and look at your notes too. And see how, now that you're smelling this wine, sure enough it lines up exactly with the notes that you took the first time. [SOUND] And the thing to notice about it is that it's fresh, it's fresh and clean. [SOUND] And smells like something that you'd like to drink right now. Glass two, on the other hand, remember is 50-50. An ounce of the new and an ounce of the two or three week old wine. And as you smell that, you'll say, [SOUND] something's not right about this wine. This wine doesn't smell fresh and fruity and vivid like the first glass did. Well, that's because half of the wine in this glass is the oxidized sample that you've saved. Oxidized by virtue of the fact that it sat around for a couple of weeks, partial in the bottle and gradually lost its luster. Okay, glass number three now that's a little bit of sherry added to your two ounces of older wine. That's classic. That has another type of an oxidized smell that we call sherrified or oxidized. It smells, [SOUND] it smells like a bruised apple. Like an apple that you've cut in half and four hours later, go back and smell that apple. It smells a little bit like roasted nuts. [SOUND] Or like stale fruit. So that's another form of oxidation that we call oxidized or sherrified. And then number four is the fault that we talked about, that we described as VA or volatile acidity. The amount that we added is approximately 1,000 parts per million. And I think we talked about 900 parts per million as being the threshold that most of us can smell. So let's go see if that works with this wine. [SOUND] Yes, very definitely so. Knowing that it's in there helps you smell it. If somebody handed me this glass of wine, I would say, [SOUND] boy, that wine is definitely not fresh. It's oxidized and of course, recall we used two ounces of your oxidized wine as the base for this. And then I'd say, there's something else going on here. [SOUND] Yes indeed, this would make nice salad dressing. Now let's go ahead and I'll pour the same flight of red wines and we'll look at the same faults Let's look at the same four oxidation faults in red wine. The same will occur in red wines and you can make them up just as we did before. So now, you're going to use your unopened bottle of red wine that we used in module 1. And you're going to use your left over bottle of red wine from module 1 that's been open for two or three weeks or however long. In glass number one, go ahead and pour two ounces of your freshly opened red wine. In glass number two, remember, we poured an ounce of the freshly opened wine and an ounce of the several week old partial wine. In glass number three, once again, we're going to go ahead and pour about a tablespoon of sherry. [SOUND] And in glass number four, a quarter tablespoon of vinegar. White wine vinegar is fine. And remember, the wine in these two glasses is more of that same wine that you had open for a couple of weeks. We want the background wine in these two glasses to be already oxidized, we're just giving them a little additional oxidation flavor. Okay, so mix, mix, mix. So go back and review these, then. Glass number one, [SOUND] that's lovely and fresh. A lot of nice berries jumping out of the glass. Again, look at your notes from module 1 and I think you'll say, wow, I recognize that wine. This is the wine that we tasted together before. [SOUND] I almost want to take a sip. Now I'm going to move to glass number two which is 50-50. And say, [SOUND] that wine is definitely in bad condition, in bad shape. This wine doesn't have the vivid aromatics that the first glass has. In fact, it smells a little bit like, [SOUND] like old, wet paper, wet cardboard. So we say this is an oxidized red wine. And this would be good enough reason to just send it back. Wine number three, to which we added some sherry, [SOUND] is the same, but it has that bruised apple or stale fruit kind of pungency to it. [SOUND] Boy, I sure wouldn't want to drink that and neither should you. In fact, waiter! Wait a minute, I can't call the waiter back. I made this. [SOUND] So this would definitely be a valid reason for sending a wine back. So would glass number two, if a wine, [SOUND] is not fresh. If a wine is smelling stale and oxidized and lackluster, that would be a reason also to send it back. Number four. [LAUGH] Well, let's just say, this would make even better salad dressing than the first flight, where we did with white wine. [SOUND] But it actually has some lovely aspects too because some of the nice aromatics that were from the red, oxidized though it was, are kind of coming through. [SOUND] But there's definitely that, do not drink this. I'm vinegar smell coming through. [LAUGH] So I think you'll get the idea. Wines that are open for awhile, wines that have leaky corks, wines that have maybe been exposed to heat, will definitely go downhill. They'll become lackluster, they'll become stale smelling. Occasionally, if vinegar bacteria are present and growing in the wine, they will start to acidify or turn to vinegar. And these are pretty easy to pick out once you've become accustomed to them. And in every case, they are definitely good reasons to send a wine back or take it back to the bottle shop.
