Murphy's Law and Volatile Acidity

How much do I hate Murphy's Law? I hate it more than stupid conservative Barbie Dolls who ride "snow machines." I hate Murphy's Law more than when someone vows to keep working at their day job after winning a 135 million dollar lottery. I hate it more than when the X-Files replaced Agent Mulder with Agent Doggett. I hate it more than our ex-president who is now raising millions of dollars (a day) for his "private library," although I admit I see the irony in that one. I hate it more than when you make the very last payment on your car and it dies while your kid is driving it a couple of weeks later. That last one isn't ironic, it's just sad and true.

Murphy's Law has been visiting me repeatedly lately in various forms. So why should my depleted wine stock be any different? The answer is, it isn't any different. To drive the point home, I opened my last bottle of wine I had at home (thank goodness for the wine storage locker that I rented at Esquin) tonight to enjoy, or so I thought, with my dinner. When I pulled out the cork, there was an alarming display of yucky looking sediment coating the inside of the neck of the bottle and all over the cork. I tried not to jump to conclusions but it did have me a bit worried. The human spirit is so full of hope. I poured a glass of the juice, a Tempranillo from Spain, into my glass. A little sediment wasn't going to stop me, no siree Bob! But after that first sniffy-sniffy of the wine, I felt Murphy's huge Law book hit me severly and squarely on the head. The smell of nail-polish remover (acetone) couldn't have been more clear if someone had drawn me a Vin diagram. UGH! Nasty, nasty smell for a glass of wine.

What exactly is Volatile Acidity and how does it happen in a bottle of wine? Well why don't you ask fracking Murphy if you're so damned curious?! I joke, I joke. Read on.

Ethyl Acetate, also known as Volatile Acidity, is the most common ester in wines. Ethyl Acetate forms from the reaction of ethanol and acetic acid, causing that most obnoxious aroma of nail-polish remover. It frequently develops in grapes on the vine from contamination with Acetobacter spp. and other aerobic bacteria converting alcohol produced by yeasts in wounds to acetic acid. It's a frequent contaminant of thin-skinned varieties of shipping grapes and of skids of grapes pressed for juice and allowed exposure to air before being used for second runs. Since 75% of the way we taste food and wine is provided by our sense of smell, well, you can see where I'm going with this. If it smells like shit, we assume it's going to taste like shit, and even if it doesn't taste like shit, we don't really care what it tastes like at this point because THAT SHIT'S JUST BEEN RUINED BY THE SMELL!

After pouring out my last bottle of wine down the drain, I gingerly felt the multitude of lumps on the top of my head, and settled for a glass of good scotch.

Dear Murphy's Law - please see the image of the darling little boy at the top of this post. He has a message for you.