The hills are alive, with the smells of rubber . . . 

 Read a very interesting article in the New York Times today. Apparently the controversy about stinky South African Wines is heating up. 

 For years the cognoscenti (a word that means 'those who know', but looks more like, 'those who smell') have had some doubts about South African wines. They claim a specific smell to them, one of 'burnt rubber', and claim it's endemic to all SA wines. 

 I'm an occasional consumer of South African wine, enjoying some of their Sauvignon Blancs and Shirazes, but avoiding any Pinotage (the grape is pretty rough at the best of times) and Chardonnays--they try too hard to be New World with Chardonnay. I've run across bottles with a smell of sulphides (the rubber compound in question) but no more often than in any other country's wine. In fact, I run across more stinky Italian wines (principally high-end reds) than any other. 

So what could it be? According to NYT, maybe nothing: 

A tasting of 60 wines was organized last year in London and included critics who had sided with Ms. MacQuitty. They fingered nine reds as burnt-rubber impaired.

These wines were returned to Stellenbosch, where the lineup of suspects was handed over to a second panel of tasters. They agreed that all nine had an “off” character but concluded that only two carried the pungency of what some might identify as rubber.

These two wines were considered a good start, however. Tasters could be trained to recognize that particular flavor, and as other wines were sampled under controlled circumstances, two became 10, and 10 became 20, enough wine with the same maligned taste to weed out some obvious possibilities.

No link was found to either the variety or the vintage of the reds. The stigmatized scent was found in wines from other countries too.

 What does this have to do with a guy from a kit wine company? Kit Taste.

I don't want to repeat the words. It's kind of like the devil:  say his name and there he is! K-T is something I've been hearing about for two decades, as applied to wine made from every company's kits. 

It's generally described as a sweet character, perhaps cooked sugar, perhaps incomplete fermentation, occasionally referred to as 'Jolly Rancher' flavour. I've tasted it--but in commercial wines before I ever got it in a kit. A lot of things have been ascribed to this: something to do with yeast metabolism, a characteristic of concentrate or pasteurised juices, but few people agree absolutely on the definition or the cause--or even the existence. 

My own feeling is that not many folks have drank commercial wine the minute is was finished fermenting, or even a month after it was cleared and readied for bottling, something that happy, eager kit makers do all the time. Very young wines all taste the same to me, full of fermentation by-products and all kinds of ketones, esters and aldehydes. Age 'em out properly and they come around just fine, especially if you can wait a reasonable two or three years. 

What's that I hear? Is the wailing and gnashing of teeth from winemaker who are contemplating three years without at drop, or is it the executive management of the wine kit companies, baying for my head on a pike? Not to worry: young wines do drink just fine, and kits are almost all formulated to be palatable and enjoyable after only three months or so--after all, we want people to enjoy their wine in a reasonable amount of time so they can come back and get some more to enjoy!

 What to do? You'll have to decide for yourself. I make premium kits and do a few things to increase the quality. Principally I just age them longer than anyone else, but if you're interested in some of the techniques for squeezing out extra quality, have a look at my article in Winemaker, Make Your Kit Wine Shine I do tend to win a few medals in open competition with them, so while some folks might find kit taste, some judges at least, aren't seeing it so much. 

In the long run, some folks who have mentioned KT have come around after ageing the wine for a longer period. Others don't make kits because they feel the flavour is one they're not interested in.  Luckily there's a bunch of us who can't really figure out what the deal is, and happily go on drinking our wine. 

In the meantime, I'm going to pick up a bottle of South African Chenin Blanc tonight to see if I can find any rubber in it. If not, I'll just have to drink it with my grilled chicken and make the best of things.  If it doesn't pan out, I can haul out a bottle of my own Chenin Blanc blend (now a couple of years old) because that's drinking just fine.