Ask a Sommelier: What Does It Mean if a Wine Is ‘Cooked’?
Picture this: You’re out for drinks with friends and someone orders a bottle of wine, only when it arrives, it smells kind of off and doesn’t taste quite right. “I think it might be cooked,” your friend says, still swirling the wine around in their glass. Cooked? A wine? What does that even mean?
To find out more about what it means when a wine is “cooked,” as well as how to prevent bottles from succumbing to this fate, we spoke with sommelier and founder of BABE wine bar Ren Peir.
“For me, cooked wine means two things,” Peir explains. “It either means the bottle has been sitting in a temperature that is way too hot, or it’s been sitting directly in UV light. Most times, this means sunshine, but other UV lights exist. too.”
While both heat and UV exposure have the potential to cook a wine, temperature tends to be more of a risk than light. In order for a wine to cook due to UV exposure, it would have to sit in direct light in a non-temperature-controlled room for quite a long time before any degradation could be perceived. Temperature, however, does not provide quite as much wiggle room. According to Peir, any temperature over 70 degrees Fahrenheit is in the danger zone, and you risk cooking your bottle if you let wine sit at 70 degrees or above for as little as an hour.
“When storing wine long-term, optimal temperatures are anywhere in the 50 to 58 degrees range. I personally keep my fridge at 55 degrees for both reds and whites,” she says. “But if you’re just transporting it and you’re worried about it cooking, it should be OK. Just do not let your wine sit above 70 degrees for more than an hour if you want to ensure minimal risk.”
Fifty to 58 degrees might be the optimal temperature range for long-term storage, but what should you do if you’re not planning on aging the bottle? Keep it in a cool, dark place that does not get above 70 degrees. As Peir explains, bottles of wine will stay good for a few weeks when kept in these conditions, but if you plan on storing them for any longer, they should be left in a wine cooler or refrigerator.
If you’re worried that one of your bottles may have been kept in sub-optimal conditions before opening, there will be a few giveaways that your bottle is cooked when you go to have a taste. For one, the wine will likely smell like vinegar. According to Peir, this can be a challenging tell for some bottles as a few varietals naturally have a more vinegar-like quality, but if the style is not known for that kind of reduction, you’ll know something is off. Another big tell is the quality of the fruit flavors.
“The biggest clue is right there in the name — cooked. So if you taste any cooked fruit notes, the wine has probably turned,” she says. “Think of jammy fruits that border on the rotten side, or if the wine is so broken down it smells saccharine, it’s cooked. In general, younger wines from newer vintages should have fresh, bright fruit, so if you’re tasting anything otherwise, you know it’s done.”
It’s important to monitor for these same qualities while tasting wine out, too. While wine bars and restaurants tend to have more sophisticated storage solutions than many people do at home, their methods aren’t foolproof, and wines can still go bad. If you suspect wine you ordered by the glass is cooked, Peir explains that you are entirely welcome to send it back and ask for a new bottle to be opened. And if you ordered the whole bottle, it’s imperative that you call out the flaw as soon as possible.
“The first taste of a bottle that you order is to really make sure that there are no wine faults like volatile acidity, cork taint, or anything with storage,” she explains. “So if you suspect the wine is cooked, feel free to mention it to your sommelier. They’ll likely taste it themselves and either offer you a new bottle or come back and explain that this is how the bottle should taste. At that point, it’s up to you if you want to argue.”
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