Aging = bad smell/taste?

[burton167can]

I made a 10L cheeky monkey Malbec about 10 months ago, it tasted OK at the time of bottling and was good until the time it was gone about 4 months later. After bottling this kit I gave a bottle to my mother who kept it at her house until last night when we drank it.

Upon pouring this bottle into the decanter the aroma was definatley apparent, it smelled heavily of Wet Dog, the taste was also off a bit, almost a bit tart.

My questions is, can poor cellaring conditions cause the wine to spoil so quickly, or can this problem be attributed to not adding extra sulphite to compensate for the aging. Where this particular bottle was stored was beside a glass sliding door and about 2ft away from a furnace duct. Although this bottle was never in direct sunlight I imagine that temperature fluctuations are occuring regularily, between running the furnace/AC, opening and closing of the door and the heat/cold loss attributed to being beside glass.

The spoilage seems pre-mature to me even with the poor storage condtions.

 

[philogeek]

I think it's likely a case of "all of the above".

Just curious: did you rack as necessary to get rid of sediment, and did you filter before you bottled?

For what it's worth, I put potassium metabisulfite in every wine I make, no exceptions.

I've experienced this sort of spoilage under a couple specific instances (may or may not be helpful in your case):
* the first bottle bottled (due to a bit too much air making it in there as the syphon gets started)
* the last bottle bottled (again, due to the syphon getting broken and introducing air)
* Not filtering, and ending up with sediment in the bottle (not sure whether this is due to a continued/restarted fermentation, or what)

If you had left it in the decanter for a couple hours, I wonder if it would have improved?

 

[ibglowin]

"Wet Dog" smell is one of the biggest signs of "Cork Taint".

That said, you also had some incredibly poor storage conditions thrown on top of things.

Hard to say at this point exactly what the bottom line cause was.

 

[burton167can]

As far as racking, I followed the kit directions exactly. The wine was filtered at the time of bottling with a #2 pad from Buon Vino. It may have improved, but we dumped it right away and had some 8 month old En Primeur which was great!

 

[philogeek]

... we dumped it right away and had some 8 month old En Primeur which was great!

So, it ended well after all!

 

[winemaker_3352]

"Wet Dog" smell is one of the biggest signs of "Cork Taint".

That said, you also had some incredibly poor storage conditions thrown on top of things.

Hard to say at this point exactly what the bottom line cause was.

Yup - that is exactly what i was going to say!! Ideal cellar temps are mid 50's and humidity in the 70'2 - i think. With that being said - not a lot of us have a cellar - so consistent temps are key.

You can store it in warmer temps - just make sure you keep the temp the same.