How Do I Know if I Just Don’t Like It or if the Wine Is Bad?

By Kevin Zraly

It is perfectly okay not to like a wine. But a few bad smells can help you determine if the wine is truly bad. Learn to determine these and you will be well on your way to being able to tell if wine is bad enough to send back.

The first smell is vinegar, which means there is too much acetic acid in wine.

The second is sherry smell, which means the wine has been oxidized, or exposed to air. Authentic Sherry, from Spain, is intentionally made through controlled oxidation, but you should not have that smell in any of your wines outside of sherry.

Does it smell dank, wet, moldy, or like an old cellar? This probably means the wine absorbed the taste of a defective cork and is commonly referred to as "corked wine."

How about the smell of sulfur (burnt matches)? That means the wine has too much sulfur dioxide.