Don't go into the light, Carol Anne

If you're up to date in your Lab Reports, you'll know that we have been bombarding a bottle of Pacific Rim Dry Riesling with Ultraviolet radiation in hopes of recreating the "lightstrike" wine fault under laboratory conditions (the original FINDING FAULT Lab post is here).

We subjected the bottle to 10-12 hours of UV-light each day over a six day period.

Now there's an argument to be made that we'd have been better off irradiating our wine in a tanning bed. As it may be that radiation in the UVA/B spectrum is more effective in this regard.

But we're a scientific lab, not a tanning salon. So we went with what we had, namely, a SterilGARD III ADVANCE class II Biological Safety Cabinet.

Lightstrike occurs through a reductive process which creates a number of sulfuric compounds, among them something called thiols. Thiols are the same chemical component used to give natural gas it's rank smell. They make old beer taste skunky. They actually make actual skunks smell skunky. Trying to get them into your wine is clearly ill-advised.

So we held our noses (figuratively; wouldn't be much of a test if we'd actually held our noses) and blindly tasted our thiol-thick wine against one not similarly abused.

It wasn't easy to tell the good from the bad. The wine from the sterilization tank had a strong odor of rubber bands, and a burnt rubber taste apparent on the palate as well.

When not abused the Pacific Rim Riesling is a competent, if somewhat boring, expression of the grape. (I believe we already mentioned it's a "great value"). A nose of mandarin orange and citrus zest with hints of honey and straw. A straightforward palate of pear (sweet) and lime (acid).

Someone did note the irony that the goût de lumière was slightly phenolic. And so could almost pass as goût de pétrole in a Riesling. We've asked the Baker company to alert us if they have an upswing of sales of SterilGARD cabinets in the Mosel river valley.

Goût de lumière

The "taste of light." Sounds sexy doesn't it? Like a gift from the fairies. Or a something you eat on the way to Nirvana. But goût de lumière -- lightstrike in English -- is actually a fault that makes tainted wine taste like rancid rubber bands or damp sheep.

Amongst the flaws in our FINDING FAULT series, we voted LIGHTSTRIKE as the flaw with the best name (see THIS NOTE on voting at the Lab).

According to wikipedia:

Lightstruck wines are those that have had excessive exposure to ultraviolet light... Very delicate wines, such as Champagnes, are generally worst affected, with the fault causing a wet cardboard or wet wool type flavor and aroma... The fault explains why wines are generally bottled in colored glass, which blocks the ultraviolet light, and why wine should be stored in dark environments.

Good to know why wine bottles are green. But what does lightstrike really taste like?

At the Lab, we are determined to find out. So we jammed a bottle of Pacific Rim, NV, Dry Riesling into a SterilGARD III ADVANCE class II Biological Safety Cabinet (manufactured by the Baker Company) that we use to sterilize instruments. We plan to bombard the bottle with a massive dose of ultraviolet radiation (254nm/UVC), and then taste it blind against a bottle stored carefully in our cellar.

No doubt, several questions come quickly to mind. First of which must surely be: Who makes non-vintage Riesling?

Randall Grahm is who. Grahm is the eccentric genius of Bonny Doon Vineyard. He has scaled back his business significantly to focus on the production of single-vineyard wines driven by our old friend the magic mud. Which means this non-vintage Riesling is a vineyard by-product. Whether or not this is left-over juice is pure speculation on my part, but I do know that this wine is made from grapes grown in Washington state and then blended with additional wine sourced from the Mosel region in Germany. You can buy it at Trader Joe's for $9.

What? It's not like we were going to irradiate something expensive.

You won't want to miss the results. Stay tuned...



(girl with wings: © George Mayer | Dreamstime.com )

Tomb Raider, Bad Merlot Edition

It was painful just thinking about doing this one. Given our prior experiment, we knew what was in store for us. And we knew it wasn't good.

It was bad, bad Merlot.

What's to get excited about in that? Nothing. That's what. But we at the Lab are dedicated in our mission. So, as with our previous trial, we went down to the local Safeway to find a current release of the 2000 Sterling Vineyards Napa Valley Merlot that we discovered while spelunking in an underutilized wet bar.

But we came up empty. Or almost so. Best match we could find was a 2004 Sterling Vintner's Collection Central Coast Merlot. Given how long, we've procrastinated this, we figured close enough would suffice. Besides, Sterling Vineyards was once owned by Coca-Cola, and is now owned by Diageo PLC who also owned Burger King. So we didn't really expect there'd be too much site-specific difference between the wines anyway.

And our expectations were met. They were both generic wines of over-extracted fruit and too much alcohol. Nearly interchangeable. Like two Diet Cokes. The older wine did have a faint aroma of dried, wet cardboard, but they were otherwise indistinguishable.

We hadn't mentioned that we had also found a third bottle under the cupboard. Another Merlot, a 2000 DeLoach Estate Bottled Russian River Valley Merlot. We were hoping to just throw it away without anyone noticing. But given the Sterling Merlot had somehow survived the destruction suffered by the Coppola Sauvingnon Blac in the prior experiment (you really should have a look; this is the third time I've mentioned it), we thought we'd open it, see if it had also dodged the cooked bullet.

No such luck. It was way off, smelled like rancid fruit, rubbing alcohol and... you guessed it, wet cardboard that had dried in the sun.

What began as an experiment in discovering wine flaws, quickly turned into an opportunity for palate training. Set against the backdrop of the obviously cooked DeLoach Merlot, the dry/wet cardboard smell of the Sterling Merlot became really easy to identify. I think everyone here at the Lab will be a little more savvy the next time the sommelier at Burger King tries to pass off a slightly cooked Merlot.

Cold Play

We've all done it. You grab a bottle from the cellar and whack it into the freezer to put a quick chill on it. Then halfway through dessert, you realize with a start, "Oh, [deleted]! The bottle in the freezer!" You race back to the kitchen to discover you've made Gavi granita. So what to do?

I could tell you this experiment was prompted by scientific curiosity. But the truth is elsewhere. Couple weeks ago, I realized we had totally forgotten an employee birthday -- which is always hard on Lab morale. So I jammed a Pinot Gris into the freezer and whipped up some vanilla fondant for a Sarah Lee poundcake I found in the fridge. The cake was a big hit and saved the day, but it wasn't until someone pointed out that Pinot Gris was the classic pairing for Sarah Lee poundcake that I remembered the bottle in the freezer.

In the kitchen, a debate broke out -- not uncommon here -- about whether the thawed wine would suffer any ill effect from being frozen. I cut the debate short -- also not uncommon -- pointing out there is no need to argue about something if there was an empirical proof available.

So we put a bottle of Chateau Ste Michelle/Dr Loosen, Riesling Eroica, 2006, in the freezer and froze it. We let the bottle thaw completely and then tasted it side by side and blind against an identical bottle that we had not similarly abused.

There was a minor color variation between the two, the Left bottle just slightly more pale than the Right. The Right bottle was a little more expressive on the nose, but the fruit in the two bottles was nearly identical: pear, nectarine and pineapple. The residual sugar was somewhat more prominent in the Right. And the faint mineral element on the finish was a little bitter on the Left.

Given what happened with the wine we left in the hot car, when the blindfolds came off we were all a little relieved to discover that the Right bottle was the "right" bottle. The Left had been frozen and thawed. But in truth, the Left bottle was hardly ruined. If you hadn't been looking for the distinctions, you might not have noticed.

Lab Conclusion: Don't toss that frozen Chardonnay into the bin. Just serve it a little later in the evening. Or pour it for people who asked if you had any White Zinfandel. They'll never know.

Tomb Raider, of Sorts

Do you have a nosy Aunt Gladys who rummages through the drawers and cabinets in the bathroom to see what sort of pharmaceuticals she can find?

I do the same thing. I think this might be why no one from the Lab ever invites me over for dinner. That, and the inequality of rank can be so awkward. But I'm not rummaging around in medicine chests looking for your oxycontin or anti-psychotic meds, I'm looking for research opportunities. Bottles of wine for our FINDING FAULT program. I've found wet bars to be ripe territory to mine.

So it was at the condo my parents keep in San Diego. I found a small cache of wine in a cabinet under the sink. And, since no one was paying attention, I "borrowed" two bottles. One red. One white. Or, what appeared to have been white, once upon a time.

The white was a Sauvignon Blanc from famed film/wine-maker Francis Coppola. It was from the 2004 vintage and probably purchased on release. So it's been under the sink for the better part of 3 years.

I sent one of our research assistants down to the local supermarket to buy a bottle of the current release. He came back with an '07. We opened them side by side at the Lab.

The 2007 is pale yellow, almost clear. A nose of pear, grapefruit oil and lime. Less interesting in the mouth. Almost like grapefruit juice, including the bitter aftertaste.

The 2004 is golden yellow, more like an oaky Chardonnay. It is clearly off. It smells like honeydew melon rotting under a warm sun. And rubber bands. And a volatile element not unlike rubbing alcohol.

Because I am devoted, fully committed to the research program at the Lab, I stepped up to the altar of scientific sacrifice and drank some of the rotten juice. Just one of many sacrifices we make every day at Rational Denial.

It is surprisingly less offensive in the mouth. Flat and undifferentiated fruit and a bitter, slightly rancid, finish.

Side by side, it was obvious the wine stored in the often vacant, and so often uncooled and unheated, condo was well into the throes of madeirization. We knew this even before we'd opened the bottle. Sauvignon Blanc is not amber hued. Still, just to see, I put a glass of the cooked wine in the fridge. After a two hour interim, I tasted it again. The offensive nose had closed down significantly, not much to smell. The palate was still dull and flat. It wasn't good. But the flaws were no longer quite so glaring. It tasted more like wine at this point.

In fact, if I had no experience with this wine, and a burly, impatient waiter hovering over my shoulder, I might have hemmed a bit, unsure if it was truly off. I guess that's why they open the bottle at your table?

Next we'll try the same thing with the red. However, it's a mass-produced Merlot, so it may have to wait until we're really desperate at the Lab for something to do (my wine education clearly did not begin at home).

Finding Fault #1: Cooked?

It's generally agreed that wine should be stored between 55 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Perhaps not coincidentally, if you dug a deep hole in your backyard, this is the same temperature you would likely find at the bottom of it. It's why we put wine in cellars.

Deep in the cool ground is one thing. Excessive exposure to heat is another altogether. According to wikipedia, my new source for everything, "Wines that are stored at temperatures greatly higher than [55 degrees] will experience an increased aging rate." We call this "cooked." Cooked wines can oxidize, lose taste, color and aroma. We call this "flattening."

It is also the most widespread and common fault in wine (again according to wikipedia). So we at the Lab, decided to "cook" a bottle to see what happens.

We started with two bottles of identical wine. Something called Sustainable Red from Parducci (2005) that I bought at Whole Foods for $10/ea (which means you can probably find it for $6 somewhere else). The folks at the Mendocino Wine Co who own Parducci are pretty smug about their greenness, they claim to be the first carbon-neutral winery. As I drive a Prius hybrid, I'm happy to be working with them.

It was in the mid-80s in LA yesterday, hotter still inside my car which I intentionally parked in the sun, leaving one of the Sustainables inside. The other, I put in my 55 degree wine fridge. After 90 minutes, the cork on the bottle had actually burst through the seal. That's an undoctored photo of the unadulterated pushed-cork to the right. I think if I'd let it go another 30 minutes, I would've spent the afternoon looking for seat covers.

After the exposure, I put both bottles in the fridge. The real fridge, not the wine one. And let them both get cold. An hour before opening, I took them out of the fridge to warm back up to something closer to room temperature. I opened both bottles and let them breath in the bottle for 30 minutes. I marked one of the bottles with a black dot, and put a rubber band on the stem of a wine glass. I then asked my wife to pour a glass from each bottle, and make a note of which bottle went into which glass. As I had failed to tell her that I spent my day driving around with an inexpensive bottle of red wine riding shotgun, she had no idea what we were doing. This way, we both managed to taste "blind."

Up first, no rubber band: Jammy notes on the nose with some pleasant oakiness. Ripe plum and bright red fruits. A drying, tannin finish with an interesting, almost chalky texture on the tongue. My wife loved this. And I thought it was pretty good.

Rubber band was next: Herbaceous nose, green cedar and something astringent. In the mouth, pretty indifferent, uncomplex stuff. But the finish was exceptionally bitter. Actually made my wife gag a little.

My wife looked at me crossly, and held up the offensive glass. "What did you do to this?" I told her I cooked it. Showed her the pictures. She nodded at me in the motherly, patronizing way that I've seen her use with the kids when they do things like jam frozen peas up their nose.

"So which one had the black dot?" I asked. She turned over the card where she had written her key, and made a face.

We were both VERY shocked to discover the wine we both preferred had been my motoring partner. The bitter wine that made my wife choke was, it turns out, the one from the pristine conditions of the cellar.

Conclusions? First, I'd say the experiment isn't over. I'm putting both bottles back in the fridge and plan to taste them -- again blind -- tomorrow. Second, it may be that "an increased aging rate" is a good thing for an inexpensive, young-to-the-point-of-green, wine to endure. I'm not advocating that you leave cheap wine in the sun. Then again, if you only paid $4.99 for it. Why not?

Finding Fault

Cork taint, brett, cooked, lightstruck, there's a lot of things that can go wrong with wine. Ladybugs in the vines sometimes get pressed with the grapes, and this can make the wine taste like rancid peanut butter or cat pee. Too much time on the lees (the leaves, stems and skins which are often left in contact with the grape juice as a normal part of wine-making) can produce mercaptans. Mercaptans are what the gas company adds to natural gas so it stinks. Good for avoiding blowing yourself up; not good for wine. Wine is a living thing, breathing and evolving. That's part of the beauty of it. And, unfortunately, flaws are sometimes part of the process.

Some "flaws" are even desirable. Brettanomyces, for instance, often called "brett" by wine geeks, is a strain of yeast that can make wine taste like band-aids. But at lower-levels, it can impart an aged character to a young wine; some think it adds depth and complexity. I recently had a bottle of red that someone noted smelled of equine urine; very scientifically described, I thought. With equal biological precision, I said, "Yeah, cool, huh?" I now realize we were wankering around about a bottle of badly brett tainted wine. I've had another equally piss-y bottle from the same producer. Brett seems to be their thing. It's possible they're encouraging the flaw on purpose. More likely, they're too cheap to buy new barrels. Brett thrives in the oak used to age wine before bottling.

And then there's the all-inclusive category for flawed wine: "corked." Which I've always thought sounds appropriately like what you'd really like to say (hint: starts with an "f"). Sometimes "corked" actually means "corked," meaning contaminated with TCA, a mold that grows on cork treated with chlorine bleach. But more often "corked" means oxidized, or cooked, or f----ed up in other ways you're not quite sure about and would need an advanced degree in organic chemistry to understand.

For me, there's nothing worse than ordering a nice red at a restaurant, tasting it and then wondering, "Is this off?" And is it? If some wine-makers encourage flaws as part of their artistry, what counts as "off?" TCA is detectable at levels around 9 parts per trillion, which is, by definition, next to nothing. And we all have different thresholds for detection. I may sense it at 9, but you may need 11 parts to notice. So we sit there, eye-corking the sommelier, drinking wine that smells like wet newspaper.

Clearly, this is a category that calls for rigorous investigation. Or would be if (again!) I had bothered to get that advanced degree in chemistry. But there are a few experiments worth conducting that fall within the competencies of the Lab.

I happen to have one underway now. Results later in the week.

(image credit: © Andre Nantel | Dreamstime.com)