When it's OK to refuse a bottle of wine at a restaurant, and when it's not

When the waiter or sommelier pours you a small tasting sample before filling the glasses of your guests, the purpose is for you to decide if the wine has any faults that make it undrinkable.

You should refuse a bottle when you detect it has any of the following four problems. Start off by saying, "This wine is not sound," (this is vino babble that the sommelier will take seriously). Follow up with the explanation that the wine is……"

• Corked
  This means the wine smells like wet cardboard, or damp newspapers and you probably won't want to even sip it. The wine has deteriorated due to being exposed to TCA (Trichloroanisole), which is an infection of natural cork which affects a small but annoying percentage of wines - about 1 out of every 10 bottles.
• Cooked
  Exposure to heat during transit or storage has caused it to become dull and lifeless. The wine is simply flat and has little taste.
• Oxidized
  If it has had excessive exposure to oxygen, it will have seriously nutty (sherry-like) aromas.
• Very yellow or dark brown at the rim
  indicating that this red wine is past its peak. Red wines that are aged can have a very tawny or amber tone at the rim, which is different from brown or yellow.

It's not OK to order a bottle and take a sip and ask the waiter to take it back because you don't like it. The sip you take isn't a preference test.

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