Does Wine Go Bad? How to Tell Before You Pour

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Yes, wine goes bad, but almost never in the way people fear. Spoiled wine will not make you ill; it is simply unpleasant, and the question does wine go bad is really four separate questions. An unopened bottle can be ruined by heat, light or a faulty cork long before you touch it. An opened bottle is on a clock from the moment air gets in. Bottles that have been cellared for decades can simply pass their peak and fade. And a small number of wines spoil in the bottle through microbial activity that has nothing to do with how you stored them. Each failure has a signature you can read with your eyes and nose in under a minute, and that is the skill worth having.

The four ways wine goes bad

Oxidation is the most common fault in a home kitchen. Once a bottle is open, oxygen reacts with the wine’s alcohol and phenolic compounds, flattening fruit and producing acetaldehyde, the compound that gives sherry its nutty, bruised-apple character. In a fino that is a style; in a three-day-old Sauvignon Blanc it is a fault. Reds turn brick-brown at the rim and taste tired and sour; whites deepen to gold and lose their snap.

Cork taint comes from a compound called TCA (2,4,6-trichloroanisole) that forms when natural cork comes into contact with certain chlorine-based compounds and mould. A corked wine smells of wet cardboard, damp basement or a dog that has been out in the rain, and at low levels it simply strips the fruit out of the glass without an obvious off-smell. Estimates of how many natural-cork bottles are affected vary; the figure has fallen sharply since the early 2000s as cork producers introduced screening and cleaning, but it has not reached zero. Screwcaps and technical corks avoid it almost entirely.

Heat damage, which the trade calls a cooked or maderised wine, happens in transit, in a hot car or in a cupboard above the oven. The wine expands, pushes against the cork, and oxidises fast. The giveaway is a cork that has crept up out of the neck, or a sticky ring of dried wine under the capsule. In the glass, cooked wine tastes of stewed jam and caramel and has lost its acidity.

Refermentation and microbial spoilage are the rarest for a consumer. A still wine that fizzes slightly when you pour it has refermented in the bottle; a wine that smells sharply of nail-polish remover has a volatile acidity problem; one that smells of barnyard or Band-Aid carries a yeast called Brettanomyces, which at low levels some drinkers like and at high levels nobody does. These are winemaking faults, not storage faults, and the bottle was flawed when it left the winery.

How to tell before you pour

Start with the bottle. Look at the fill level: in a young wine it should sit in the neck; a level down at the shoulder in a wine under ten years old means something has gone wrong. Check the cork through the capsule. If it is raised or there is seepage around it, assume heat. Look at the colour against a white surface. Young reds should be purple or ruby to the rim; young whites pale straw. Brown in a five-year-old red, or deep amber in a three-year-old white, is oxidation.

Then smell, before tasting. A sound wine smells of fruit, something floral or savoury, and perhaps oak. The faults each have a tell.

• Wet cardboard, mouldy newspaper, no fruit: cork taint. Send it back or return it to the shop.
• Sherry, bruised apple, flat and nutty where it should be fresh: oxidation.
• Stewed fruit, caramel, cooked jam, with a raised cork: heat damage.
• Vinegar or nail-polish remover: volatile acidity, well beyond acceptable levels.
• Struck match or rotten egg: sulphur compounds. Unlike the others, this often blows off after a vigorous swirl or ten minutes in a decanter, so give it a chance.

A wine that passes the bottle and the nose will almost always pass the palate. If you still are not sure, taste it: faulty wine is thin, sour or bitter, and the finish disappears. Trust the judgment. Restaurants and retailers accept returns on faulty bottles as a matter of course, and a sommelier would rather replace one than have you drink it unhappily.

Does opened wine go bad, and how fast

An opened bottle, recorked and refrigerated, keeps roughly as follows: sparkling wine one to three days with a proper stopper; light whites and rosés three to five; full-bodied whites three to five; light reds three to five; tannic reds three to six, sometimes improving on day two; fortified wines weeks to months. Refrigerate reds too, and take them out half an hour before you want them. Cold slows every reaction that is working against you, and a decanted wine, with its enormous surface area, should be finished the same night. For the full breakdown by style, see our guide to how long opened wine lasts.

Can old wine go bad in the cellar

Unopened wine does not spoil on a schedule, but it does have a life. Inexpensive wine is made to be drunk within a year or two of release and simply fades after that; there is no fault, just less of everything. Serious reds and sweet or fortified wines can improve for decades if they are kept cool, dark, still and on their side. Stored upright in a warm apartment, the same bottles will be past it in five years. If you are keeping anything for more than a few months, read how to store wine at home without a cellar first, and for a sense of when a mature wine is ready rather than finished, see which 2016 Barolo, Brunello and Bordeaux are ready to open now.

Wines that refuse to go bad

If you drink a glass a night and resent pouring the rest down the sink, buy bottles built for it. Fortified wines were designed for long sea voyages, and they are still the only category you can open on Monday and pour with a clear conscience on the following Monday.

• Taylor Fladgate 10 Year Old Tawny Port: oxidative ageing in wood means it keeps for a month or more after opening, in the fridge, without losing its figs-and-walnut character. Shop it at Wine.com
• Lustau Dry Amontillado Los Arcos: already oxidatively aged; an open bottle will hold for several weeks and improves most things you cook with it. Shop it at Wine.com
• Blandy’s 10 Year Malmsey Madeira: Madeira was deliberately heated and oxidised in its making, so it is effectively immune; an open bottle lasts months, even years. Shop it at Wine.com

For a still table wine, a Coravin or a simple argon spray is the only real protection, and the cheapest rule still holds: buy half bottles of what you love rather than full bottles of what you will not finish. Otherwise, pour the rest into a small jar with no air space, refrigerate it, and cook with it by Thursday.