Wine myths
Oxidised wine is always faulty
“If it smells nutty and oxidised, the wine is broken.”
Accidental oxidation is a fault. Deliberate oxidative ageing is a category of great wine — Oloroso, Madeira, Vin Jaune, Tawny Port — and the same aromas mean opposite things in the two cases.
The full answer
Oxidation produces acetaldehyde and, over time, a family of nutty, bruised-apple, caramel and dried-fruit characters. That chemistry is the same whether it was intended or not.
When it happens to a wine that was meant to be fresh — a Sauvignon Blanc that was badly sealed, a bottle left open for a week — it is a fault, and the wine has lost the fruit it was built around.
When it is the point, it is something else entirely. Oloroso Sherry is deliberately fortified above the level at which flor survives and aged in contact with air for years. Madeira is heated and oxidised on purpose, which is exactly why an open bottle keeps for months. Tawny Port and Vin Jaune are made the same way.
The diagnostic question is not what the wine smells of but what it was supposed to smell of. A tired Chablis and a fine Oloroso can share descriptors and share nothing else.
A biochemical or physical process that has been demonstrated experimentally and is not seriously contested — the sort of statement that appears in enology textbooks without hedging.
What would settle it: A controlled experiment failing to reproduce the process.
Sources
Sources consulted
- The Australian Wine Research Institute — AWRI
- Consejo Regulador de las Denominaciones de Origen Jerez-Xérès-Sherry — Consejo Regulador del Jerez
- Instituto do Vinho, do Bordado e do Artesanato da Madeira — IVBAM, Portugal
- WSET educational materials and the Systematic Approach to Tasting — Wine & Spirit Education Trust