Tuesday, December 16, 2014

The Day Wine Tasted Bad

Last Thursday, as the Pineapple Express storm howled outside our windows, I prepared a comfort food: bacon-cheeseburgers. I had all the ingredients for an oeonophile version: Benton's super smokey bacon, English raw-milk aged cheddar, and grass-fed, grain-finished ground beef. All I needed was the right bottle of wine.

I thought I was in the mood for a comfort wine: a ripe, rich red. I get dozens of this kind of wine as samples but don't have the desire for them often enough. What an opportunity! I opened a Cabernet I'd been wanting to try, and found it short, hollow and unappetizing. Well, not to worry, I had plenty more to choose from. I opened five more red wines, and disliked them all.

This happens, as anyone who tastes wine professionally can tell you. It doesn't matter if they're expensive; sometimes you just don't like the wines. You can get yourself into a quandary if you have to rate them and you admire but dislike them: Zinfandels over 15.5 percent alcohol, for example, do that to me. But that's not what I was opening here. All were wines that, for one reason or another, I expected to like.

Still, no problem, there's always more wine around my home. I opened more bottles.


 

What if this happened at a wine competition?
This time I aimed a little higher, because my wife was hungry and I wanted to start cooking, and a little wider, not going solely for riper reds. Reserve Syrahs. Wines from Spain and Croatia I'd been saving for a special one-bottle-only-night occasion. I hated them too. Fifteen bottles opened, a few scattered glasses on the counter that I hoped would improve with air, most bottles poured down the drain.

I remembered a conversation I once had with Marin County winemaker Sean Thackrey. He said before opening a great wine -- a Hermitage from a special vintage, for example -- he would open a similar, lesser wine (a cheaper Syrah) to see how it was tasting. Sean believes certain wines taste better or worse on certain days. Beyond the idea that your body and taste buds can be different, his theory is that atmospheric conditions influence the taste.

Thursday was an exceptional day, atmospherically: very wet, high humidity, warmer than expected. Psychologically, I thought I was in the mood to love a red wine. Physically I felt fine. But red wine just tasted bad.

My tongue felt strafed by tannins, so I decided to freshen it with a few sips of a fine white wine I'd loved on Wednesday, a Russian River Valley Chardonnay. That didn't taste as great to me either. I knew I was in trouble.

I opened three more red wines: a single-vineyard Pinot Noir from a producer I like, a Napa Merlot I liked just two weeks earlier and a Vino Nobile di Montepulciano I liked two vintages ago. At this point I was being foolishly wasteful, but I had to know. Sure enough, I didn't like any of them. I didn't hate them like I had some of the earlier wines, but maybe that's because I knew, logically, I shouldn't.

I made the bacon cheeseburgers and served the three wines to my wife, trying not to bias her against them. She doesn't worry about wine like I do; she had a glass of Merlot and pronounced it acceptable. Me, I drank a little Merlot, a little Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, and they were serviceable with the ground beef, but no more enjoyable to me than pulling something corporate at random off the Safeway shelf.

I know a food writer who was in a traffic accident and lost her sense of smell. I had this worry: had something changed in me? Would wine never taste good again? It's enough to make you wake up in the middle of the night, heart pounding.

The next night, friends came over for pizza and board games. I liked the wines they brought, and I opened some California wines that I liked more than they did (they're Eurosnobs.) I was cured. I was fine.

But what happened Thursday? What happened on The Day Wine Tasted Bad? Did anybody else experience this last week?

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23 comments:

jason Carey said...

This has happened to me before.. Its just one of those weird things.. then I usually open a white or drink a beer.

Jack Everitt said...

This happens perhaps three times a year for me. Just nothing is enjoyable, no matter how many bottles of wine I open. Beer is the winner here. We should track this and see if it's generally the same days.

Bob Henry said...

Blake,

Did you sample any beer or sake or sparklikng wine to further test your palate?

Bob

Bob Henry said...

ERRATUM AND ELABORATION:

Blake,

Did you sample any beer or sake or sparkling wine to further test your palate?

Bob

And did you do anything to preserve the opened bottles to resample them on another calendar day?

Unknown said...

This happened to me earlier this year. I opened 6 bottles of wine. They all tasted hollow and tannic and just off-putting. At first, I thought the first two bottles must have be flawed but I couldn't nail it - cork taint combined with oxidization? With each additional bottle opened I grew more frustrated and worried. My palate got back to normal but it took two days.

Anonymous said...

Case study for using Coravin. Don't throw out that wine if it's your palate that's hit a bad patch, save it for another day!

Achilles said...

I am in the middle of this at the moment, for the last few days all red mines have tasted dreadful, I can't place it, the tannin tastes vile. Nice to know other people have experienced it, I thought it was something neurological

Unknown said...

Same here -- Last weekend I took out a Gigondas from a winery I know well.. drunk two glasses but the taste was completely different from my reference. I chunked the bottle and blamed it on cork. (Terrible headache the next day by the way, not commensurate with the two glasses). Today, same experience with a Barbera d'Asti I also know very well. Very afraid i killed my taste buds somehow, is that at all possible?

Key issue is that the delicate layers in both wines are gone, all I taste is bad tannins. Its horrible.

W. Blake Gray said...

A.C.: I wouldn't worry about killing your taste buds yet. Don't drink any wine for, say, three days. Since writing this post I had a recurrence of an Everything Tastes Bad day with different atmospheric conditions. This time I didn't waste as much wine, drank sparkling water with dinner, and abstained from wine for a couple days, and everything tasted fine later in the week.

Unknown said...

I had this experience yesterday. I am relieved to hear other people have also had this experience! What a waste of good wine..

Unknown said...

I just threw five good bottles down the drain before googling “Why does all my red wine taste bad?” I’mvery relieved to find this post. I’m going to stop opening and wasting bottles for a few days and cross my fingers that every bottle I own has not suddenly turned.

Unknown said...

I'm glad I Googled and found this site, as I go through periods (as I am right now) where all red wines taste like vinegar and gives me heartburn and acid reflux.

Some time ago I figured out that it's something in my body that's changing the taste, and I have to change to a different wine/vintage. I would really like to know what the cause is. I can drink beer or a Caesar with no problems, but I enjoy my glass of wine in the evenings and don't want to have to give it up.

Unknown said...

I work in the beer and wine industry and I'm having a similar experience. Lately red wines that I would normally enjoy have been tasting sour/tart. For this reason, I have been drinking beer almost exclusively. At least a beer habit is easier on the wallet. Still, I cannot put my finger on why even premium reds are hitting my palate in such a disagreeable way. This has been going on for months at this point.

W. Blake Gray said...

I gotta ask -- have you had Covid-19 at any time?

Unknown said...

I've heard that you can lose your sense of smell or taste with Covid- 19. In these cases, taste and smell senses are both working fine, the wine just tastes bad. I am going through this right now too - hence why I'm on this page. I've been drinking my "go to" pinot grigio for years and last night and today, it just tastes bad. Two separate bottles, two separate days. I may give wine a break for a few days as suggested above - but overall, disconcerting.

W. Blake Gray said...

Good luck to you. I reset my own taste last year after surgery: I could taste, but things tasted different. It took a while. I went with good wines I knew that I liked, and I stayed with them for several days. The go-to Pinot Grigio is the right way to start, but I had a hard time with high-acid wines at first, even though I usually love them. Don't be discouraged. I started and stopped a couple times too.
Try a red. An older red really helped me. I knew it had to taste better than it was tasting, and eventually it did.

Lady Lithia said...

I was trying to figure something out. I'm no wine connoisseur, but I like a bit of white wine most nights. Usually something sweet like Moscato. Safeway brands. :) but the other day I had some chicken, and when I poured out some barbeque sauce and it tasted like rancid vinegar. Then a little later in the evening I opened a bottle of my white wine and immediately spit it out. It tasted like rancid vinegar too! Second bottle (same brand) same thing. third bottle, different brand, same thing. I tossed the first bottle but kept the other two. Later they tasted "okay". But several times now I've thought that wine was tasting like rancid vinegar. Tonight it was the worst ever. And no, I don't have Covid, I had my fourth test just Thursday and still negative (and vaccinated). I'd probably enjoy the wine with no flavor, but vinegar? Yuck. Guess no wine for me for a while.

Dan said...

So glad to see these stories. Thought I was going bonkers!

Unknown said...

These stories have reassured me, I thought something was wrong. I cannot stand the taste of any red at the moment. I've been settling for Provence rosé or beer. I hope my taste buds remember how much they like red soon...

Unknown said...

Have had this happen a few times a year for years now. Over the past year it’s happened more often. This past Winter it happened with a celebratory bottle of Solaia, which really upset me (both for not enjoying such a great wine and the amount of money I threw away). Wish I knew why it happens and could fix it somehow. Hopefully someone has an answer, sees this blog, and let’s us know. Good luck everyone!

JudyM said...

Just had this happened, opened a bottle of red I have very much liked before and it had a weird perfume taste, so I tried another and the same, so I tried the white I was drinking yesterday and that had the same taste. I can't think of anything different in my life, between yesterday and today. About 3 hours ago I drank a smoothie that had greens like spinach, kale and watercress along with berries and pineapple, but nothing else different. I just tried a Corona and that tasted fine, so weird!!

Caroline Maxwell said...

Thanks to everyone for sharing your experiences. I've enjoyed red wine of various kinds for years until earlier this year. I wasn't well in January, tested negative for Covid and didn't feel like drinking for a long time. But when I went back to my favourite wines they all tasted the same - like vinegar. I've tried various kinds at different prices with little or no change and it's now September. Other drinks like beer and spirits taste as they should but I do miss the simple enjoyment of a relaxing glass of wine with food and sharing a bottle with friends.

Varant said...

I’ve been having this frequently the last few months! “Hollow” with disagreeable tannins is such a great way to put it. And I know these are wines that I’ve loved in the past (from exact same bottle with Coravin), and even tasted blind both times.

My main theory right now is that it’s because I’ve been playing around with creating scents, and smelling a lot of essential oils, including a lot of citrus and fruit essences. So I’m guessing that this has perhaps desensitized my palate to fruitier tastes, “hollowing out” the wine and making the bitter notes stand out.

I’m going to put the theory to the test in the coming days. Will follow up here!