During my wine-tasting classes at Chef Mavro, I've come to the realization that most people have a hard time figuring out if a wine is drinkable or if it is faulty. Even people with extensive wine experience and training can have trouble discerning if a particular wine is sound or not. Just the other night I was at a friend's house enjoying some wine with three other wine professionals. When we moved on to the second bottle, three of us had trouble deciding if the bottle was the way it was meant to be or not. It turned out the bottle was bad but I was again reminded that it's not easy to determine.

There are many faults that you might find in a wine. It could be corked, oxidized, maderized, effervescent or fizzy (when it's not a sparkling wine), cloudy, or a wine might be travel sick or bruised. The first three faults are the ones you see the most often.

What does all that mean, and why does it happen?

Corky wine or wine that is corked refers to the cork being faulty and tainted with 2,4,6 trichloroanisole, or TCA. The TCA can come from the cork itself, the barrels used for aging, or from the cellar. TCA is produced through a complex chemical process that occurs when natural airborne fungi meet chlorophenal compounds. They meet and convert to chloroanisole. Corkiness is often described as having aromas of wet dog, moldiness or wet newspaper. There are certainly different levels of corkiness as some are barely perceptible while others are painfully obvious. Not even screw caps are safe from TCA, although it is rarer in screw-capped wines; the fungi can attack the glue used to seal the screw caps and taint the wine.

Oxidized wines simply are wines that have been exposed to oxygen. It is often caused by a faulty cork or seal between the cork and the bottle. The wines often taste stale or flat and lack freshness. If it's a severe case, the color of the wine will also be darker than it should be.

Wines that are maderized are wines that have been exposed to excess heat and oxygen. Maderized wines will taste like Madeira. Madeira is a wine that is purposely heated and cooled and exposed to oxygen. The wines smell and taste spicy, burnt or like caramel. The color will also be very dark, a deep golden bordering on tan for whites and a rusty brown color for the reds.

Fizzy wines are usually undergoing a second fermentation in the bottle. A little fizz may or may not be a fault; young German rieslings, for example, may sometimes have a little fizz to them. If you're in doubt about small bubbles in your wine, take a small taste, and you'll know right away if the wine is sound or not.

Wines that are travel sick or bruised often taste similar to oxidize wines in that they are just flat. They are dull in aromas and flavors and are very tight and not expressive.

You will often hear people hem or haw over the condition of the cork after it's removed from the bottle. The cork might be dry or soaked through to the top with wine, moldy, muddy, dry and brittle or even just dust. Regardless of the condition of the cork, the wine might be good or might be bad. The only real way to check to see if the wine is good is to pull the cork, pour a bit into a glass, and give it a smell and taste.

Some wines I've seen around town lately are: