Bad wine: in crosswords or in the glass, you need to know how to spot it. Wine can indeed have certain faults, such as cork taint. But how do you use a bad wine? Some will say a wine can’t be bad. That’s false: wine can have faults, whether from its aging or from how it was made.
What is a bad wine?
That’s the question you’ll work to answer during your tasting. Making a toast is a fine idea, but you still need to do it with a good wine. So how do you tell a good wine from a bad one?
Where does bad wine come from?
A bad wine can be the result of two things. First, it can come from poor winemaking: bad technical choices, or a wine that wasn’t made the way it should have been. That’s rare if you take the time to choose your wine carefully. Expired wine can also be the result of poor storage.
What are wine’s faults?
Wine can have several faults that are fairly easy to spot, on the nose or the palate, during your tastings:
- Oxidation: a faulty bottle or cork lets air in, which can lead to oxidation. While a deliberately oxidative wine is very good, that’s not the case for wines oxidised by accident.
- Cork taint: the musty, wet-cardboard smell usually comes from a compound called TCA in a contaminated cork. It is not a storage problem, and airing the wine will not remove it.
- Vinegar: wine can turn to vinegar. You can in fact use it to make vinegar (see below).
- Cooked taste: a wine that got too hot (a car boot, a kitchen shelf) tastes of stewed fruit and jam and loses its freshness. The temperature of a wine cellar is crucial for storing wine properly.
If you come across these faults, the wine is bad. Better to set it aside and turn to another bottle.
What to do with a bad wine?
If the wine smells of rotten eggs or struck matches, that is usually reduction, and air genuinely helps: decant it and give it a little time. A corked, oxidised or vinegary wine will not recover, and oxygen only makes oxidation worse.
You can also use that bad wine in cooking. Once cooked, wine completely changes flavour: you don’t need a grand cru to make a lovely sauce. Otherwise, pour it into a vinegar pot and enjoy it again in your salads.
”Bad wine” in crosswords
“Bad wine” is a clue that comes up often in French crosswords. There are several answers depending on the length of the word you’re after:
- 4 letters: Piot
- 6 letters: Bibine
- 7 letters: Vinasse
- 7 letters: Picrate
- 7 letters: Rincure
- 8 letters: Piquette
The expression “bad wine” most often leads to the word “piquette”, the most sought-after synonym.
