OF ALL THE wine faults, a snake in your wine must rank among the most unpalatable. It may be one of the commonest in wines made from mechanically-harvested grapes. If you get mousiness on the palate, however, you will be relieved to learn this is a sign of Brettanomyces yeast (a winemaker’s most common and vexatious friend/enemy) not mice. It can be treated with large doses of SO₂ - winemaking's equivalent of the military's "bomb a village to save it". But with wine increasingly packaged in Bisphenol-rich plastic bottles and plastic-lined containers, and man boobs on the rise, a snake may be your wine’s least venomous fault.
Full article first published in The Connexion (June, 2012)
