Clear bottles can make your glass of wine smell “like boiled cabbage or sewage”, and TV pundits warn that people are falling victim to “daylight robbery”.
Susie Barrie and Peter Richards, both Masters of Wine who appeared on BBC One’s Saturday Kitchen, said the taste and aroma of sparkling, white and rosé wines can be seriously damaged if stored in translucent glass.
The couple claimed that opaque bottles, usually reserved for red wine, would better preserve the flavor of the drink.
Using translucent glass in the packaging process can lead to “light strike”, where exposure to light destroys aromatic compounds and risks double fermentation, causing drinks to take on an unpleasant odour.
Researchers found that up to 70 percent of aromatic compounds were lost simply by storing wine in clear bottles.
Clear bottles can make your glass of wine smell “like boiled cabbage or drains”, and TV pundits warn of a “daylight robbery” (Stock Photo)
Susie Barrie and Peter Richards, both Masters of Wine who appeared on BBC One’s Saturday Kitchen, said opaque glass, usually reserved for red wine, would better preserve the flavor of white wine (File Photo)
Now the TV stars, who have published six books, are calling for a “total change” to address this “scandal.”
On his Wine Blast podcast, Barrie said the issue is the biggest one facing wine drinkers right now.
She said: ‘In the most extreme cases, your wine can end up smelling seriously like boiled cabbage, drains or a wet dog.
“Now the scale of this problem is probably much larger than any other, any other wine contamination, and yet we don’t really talk about it.
‘We generally accept it, sometimes we accept it without realizing it, and generally we continue to pretend that it is not a problem, while in practice it deprives us all of our rightful enjoyment of wine.
“It’s daylight robbery in every sense of the term.”
Richards, dubbed the “David Attenborough of wine”, explained that the “most vulnerable” wines were traditionally stored in translucent bottles.
Red wines are inherently more protected because they contain higher levels of polyphenols (compounds found in grapes) that take longer for light to break down.
He said: “What is not good at all is putting wine in a transparent, colorless glass because that lets most of the light through, including the most harmful ones.”
—And what type of wine is usually bottled in transparent glass? The most vulnerable types of wine, of course, are rosé, white and some sparkling wines.
Red wines are intrinsically more protected because they contain higher levels of polyphenols (compounds found in grapes) that take longer to break down in light (Stock photo)
The couple, who have appeared regularly on BBC, ITV and Sky, are two of 507 people who have passed the rigorous exam to become Masters of Wine since 1953.
And they have an “easy” solution to prevent light from fogging up wines: use dark glass bottles.
Ms Barrie said: “If we’re talking about bottles, which is the reality for the vast majority of wines, that means the darkest glass possible – you know, black or dark amber is better because it blocks most of the light, particularly the more harmful wavelengths we have mentioned.’