What is the difference between a corked bottle and a bad one?

All corked bottles are bad bottles but not all bad bottles are corked.

Why not? What's makes a bottle corked and not just bad?

A chemical, TCA iirc, found in corks (amongst other places - just ask BV) causes a wine to be corked (at a minimum the wine loses its fruit (in my lexicion that is a slightly corked bottle), at worst you get a smell of wet newspapers).

rjs, there are many other causes of bad bottles, including simply bottle variation. Here is a good reference for flaw spotting (scroll down part way to the appropriate section).

Marquis Wines' flaw spotting page

Good info. Thanks Eric.

TCA is 2,4,6 TriCloroAnisole which can be present in cork which is cleaned with Chlorine (suprise suprise). However it can also be present in other places in a winery (which as JW1 pointed out BV found out about, some other winery also had a bad problem too). The effect varies but can be a slight dulling of the fruit in the wine to an overpowering wet newspaper smell. Some folks can't pick this up at all and others can pick up the slightest hint in a wine. Any way you look at it this is not a good thing as it tarnishes the product.

Once you have the pleasure of smelling a truly horribly corked bottle of wine, you will never ask that question again.

Out of all of the DAWGS I'm the second most cursed. THE291 can smell a corked wine from across the room. I have to be near the glass to pick it up.

Now you know what corked wine is. A corked wine is indeed a bad bottle.

Other ways that a bottle can turn bad:

Brett; Brettanomyces is a spoilage yeast that gives the wine a horsey, barnyard aroma. Some people love it. Some don't. It usually comes from a barrel that hasn't been sterilized properly. Brett gets worse as a wine ages.

Butyric acids are formed when a bottle of wine is spoiled (as in left out in the sun for a long period of time).

Dumb phase (or closed) refers to a period of transition from its youth to maturity. Shortly after bottling (6 months to 2 years) a wine may be really yummy. But then a wine may close down. Declining fruit tastes and preemergent complexity together make a wine simply taste lousy. This can last several years but then hopefully the butterfly emerges. No one knows what causes a wine to go dumb.

Bottle fermintation causes a wine to taste gassy, carbonated. Sometimes called secondary fermination. Comes from the winemaker just not paying attention.

Maderized (pronounced MAD-uhr-rized) sometimes occurs in very mature wines. This makes the wine taste something like Madera and the wine may take on a brownish color. This comes from the wine somehow getting too much oxygen. A wine can also be "sherrified".

A wine that has turned in to vinigar has an off-putting sharpness that is caused by volatile acidity. Sometimes a wine like this is called "pricked".

If a wine has mercaptins in it it will have an undesirable odor of rubber.

When a big Chardonnay is first opened it can smell of sulfer dioxide; like a burnt matchstick when it is first lit. This may be an unpleasant smell but should dissapate with a little air/breathing. This smell should not be confused with the smell of a corked wine which is hydrogen sulfide.

Now a "bad" wine you may not like can be exactly the way the winemaker wants it to taste. You just don't like it. For instance I do not particularly like the terrior taste that many Oregon Pinots have. Usually I can tell an Oregon Pinot because I just don't like the taste. Does it mean the wine is bad? No; I just don't like the taste. A personal opinion.

There are not many things more depressing than to open a bottle you have anticipated drinking for a while and pouring a glass only to have that unmistakeable aroma hit your nostrils. ---Aaaaagh. I hate it. I have been relatively lucky through the years. Most of my corked wines have been cheap ones.

Good info here. Grazie!

I'm still in the infancy of my being truly able to detect these sorts of maladies accurately.

Don't worry tj. It only confuses life. If you like the taste drink it. If you don't like the taste... well drink it if you want or pass it off on the cat. You'll know later what it really smelled out when you empty the kittie litter.

Quote:

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Nigel the cat prefers beer, particularly German Pilsners.

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Wot? Didn't you name him Gustave? Did you rename him because of his preference?

If you will re-read the quote it says "horribly corked". I am capable of detecting even small amounts of TCA, unfortunately. And as my experience with corked bottles continues, I have become more sensitive rather than less.

Many people simply cannot detect is as well as others, if it's corked, it's corked. Simple as that for me. If someone want's to argue that a wine I know is corked isn't, it's simple, they are wrong.