Waiter, waiter! There’s a snake in my wine

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)

The screwcap revolution 10 (or 11) years on

BEFORE Facebook, it took time for one revolution to inspire another. Take screwcaps. Invented in 1889, in Barnsley, they didn’t shake up the wine world for another 111 years. Screwcaps promised to rid wine of Trichloroanisole (TCA), the chemical in tainted corks making wine smell ‘corked’. But the cork industry cleaned up its act. Cork ‘failure’ is now 2-5% (i.e. better than typical condom use). TCA’s rarity made Spotting a Corked Wine the wine aficionado’s party trick. Wine critics say the 'screwcap palate' is bitter, coarse and astringent with blunt fruit and an abrupt, harshly dry finish. Spotting a Screwcapped Wine is their new party trick.

First published in The Connexion (April 2011)