Aeration opens a wine, but too much will result in oxidation and therefore spoilage. Similarly, if the wine has a cork that leeks in too much air, or if a wine goes through multiple temperature changes in the bottle over a long period, oxidation may also occur.
I find oxidation to be one of the the most common wine flaws you’ll encounter, and is the main reason that I generally don’t drink wine by the glass in restaurants, unless I know they are doing enough volume, and even have a solid wine preservation system in place. I hate having to send wine back based solely on it being open a little longer than it should, therefore in smaller restaurants you’ll most likely find me enjoying a decent micro-brew beer.
How to tell if your wine is affected: Affected wines will turn brown in color, which is easy to spot in whites, but sometimes not so much in reds, however don’t mistake a wine that has been aged for a wine that is oxidized. The taste of a truly oxidized wine will be completely flat, have zero fruit, or as though it’s had all the life sucked out of it.
Your course of action: If you’re absolutely 100% sure the wine is oxidized, send it back. As previously stated, you’ll most frequently run into this when ordering wine by the glass in a restaurant, and the wine has been open for 3+ days.
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It seems that a select few California wineries are secretly producing wines laced with cannabis, according to The Drinks Business, and Cabernet Sauvignon seems to be the grape variety of choice for the blend. “Pot wine is increasingly fashionable in wine country – much of the marijuana used for the wine comes from California’s weed capital Humboldt County,” Crane Carter, president of the Napa Valley Marijuana Growers said. According to Carter, pot wine delivers a…
