Cooked

A cooked wine is one that has been exposed to excessively high temperatures. It will smell as if the wine has been burnt, with a nose of singed berries or wood.

This fault is fairly common because it is so easy to attain. If a bottle of wine is left in the heat (e.g. in a vehicle parked in the sun all day, on an outdoor shipping dock during the summer, or in a room with poor air conditioning), it, like all liquids, will expand. This causes the cork to rise up in the bottle neck and the wine to leak through. Then, when the wine cools, it contracts, allowing hot air to enter the bottle. This will cook, and ruin, the wine.

To determine if a wine is cooked before buying or opening it, check around the cork: Is the seal broken? Does the cork protrude from the top of the bottle neck? Are there remnants of wine leaking down the bottle neck? Is the wine level inside the bottle unusually low? If the answer is yes to any of these questions, the wine is most likely cooked.

The wine store owner should be able to identify a cooked bottle of wine and remove it from his shelves, but if it slips by the merchant into your hands, you have the right to return the bottle for a refund.