One of the little tricks I've used, when appropriate, is to simply see if I can spin the capsule.

Obviously this won't work for twist-offs, certain Italian vino, - and it's not a 100% certain way of detecting anything- but it can lead you to any signs of seepage that may have occurred in the past by sticking or feeling "tacky".

While gently grappling with the capsule, press down a bit on the cork. It should "give" a bit- but be careful when handling bottles with much age on them as the corks will soften over the years if properly stored.

If NOT properly stored, that cork won't budge in the least bit, and I'll avoid the bottle. Again, not 100%, but it's about cutting down the percentage that you'll get a bad one.

Lastly, regardless of either of those two indicators, I'll usually hold the bottle up to the light and look for the level. Once finding it, I look for the color- not to see its actual color mind ya- but whether or not it's clear. Sometimes, even if the first two little tests don't make you suspicious of a bottle, a cooked wine's clouded appearance under the light can give it away.

The result? If I'm suspicious at all - particularly in the case of seepage- just stay away. And ya win ;).

Read an auction catalog sometime. Certain descriptors are put there for a reason and are a key to determine how that wine's going to behave once out of the bottle before having to pull the cork. Particularly the capsule. Even if the capsule's slightly corroded that's very likely just a natural occurrence over years of storage. For wines with some age on them, some amount of damage or wear is natural. What we're looking for are "signs of seepage"...

http://auction.morrellwineauctions.com/lotdescription.do?auctionId=249&page=17&lotId=97766

So, there's a couple. Even using these little tricks, a bad bottle has gotten through every once in a great while, but I've been able to keep the odds of it happening pretty low.

Last note: Superficial damage like bin soiled or torn labels are a buyer's best friend ;).

I've had countless oxidised wines in restaurants -- but if it's a cheap house wine, I've never seen much point sending it back; you're only going to get an equally oxidised replacement bottle. It's because they store them standing up at too-high temperatures. Dry cork and the air gets in. To give them a bit of credit, it could be more to do with transport than storage; anyway, you gets what you pays for.

If it's a good (expensive) bottle, I send it back -- but I've often encountered 'sommeliers' who claim they've 'drunk it before and that's how it tastes'. In that case, as we say in Glasgow, yer ontae plums.

(tr: forget it and go somewhere else)

A while back I was served a wine that I had a part in making and the bottle was flawed. Like a few others have mentioned it was stored behind the bar, upright, with the cork shoved back in. I'd ordered a glass of the wine, an d as soon as it came out you could smell that it was heavily oxidised. I explained this to the server, asked for a new glass, and was promptly brought a new one... from the same bottle. I thought it was silly to argue the point, but when I went in to work the next day (the wine was my boss's private label) Gus was pretty cross that I hadn't made more of a fuss about it. Gave me a lecture on the necessity of informing the restaurant the error of their ways because the next person that ordered that wine probably got it from the same old bottle, and it may have been their first (and only) experience with that wine based off a first impression of a flawed example.

Long story short: if it's flawed, please send it back. We work hard to make the wine as great as possible, and we want you to have the best possible experience from that bottle.

As an an unnecessary addendum to my TLDR post up there, I think the idea that was germinating was that winemakers could be more closely involved in wine education, to the point of providing a faulty wine along with a good one -- or even a bretty one, a corked one, and a reduced one with a good one -- to help educate the people who will ultimately be the ambassadors for their product. That way we have a concrete taste memory of the faults, and a solid way to identify them when we serve the wine.

I know Randall Grahm keeps faulted wines purely to help him and his workers more finely identify faults and combat them; I think it would be very helpful for producers and consumers were this practice opened up.

The OTHER thing I wanted to say was this (and I'm sure dear reader is bored and off to Digg by now anyway): If we're served a cold meal, or one with a hair or a bug in it, we are outraged and send it back. So it should be with faulted wines, and we as consumers must make this attitude common to those who serve us our wine. Especially when it has a 300% mark-up.

I have been a terrible wine consumer, to the point where I generally no longer frequent a restaurant that doesn't allow byob except for very specific occasions.

Wrong vintage, wrong temp, wrong designated bottling, wrong glasses,corked, cooked, refermenting wine, it goes on and on and it's not worth it.

Just let me pay to drink my own wine. $20-30 is fine for corkage, give me decent glass if you're charging that much though, and let me enjoy my experience in your establishment!

Well I believe I have encountered every problem under the sun from bacterial spoilage, excessive brett, and just plain old dirty winemaking which is the fault of the winery and leaves one with little recourse other than simply avoiding that winery to issues that allow one to return the wines.

Corked and cooked wines go back to the wine shop or restaurant. Through no fault of theirs, these wines are demonstrably defective, unlike the "stylistic" faults in my first set of examples.

Then there are physically defective bottles, torn capsules, faulty corks, chipped or cracked bottles. Bottles without corks under their capsules, bottles without wine in them. All of these have made an appearance at on time or another. Obviously these also go straight back to the retailer or distributor.

Wine is a surprisingly durable thing. I know that through experience. I've mistreated bottles only to find them showing brilliantly at some point in their life yet much wine is horribly abused. When I first got into wine I was very lucky. I feel I've told this tory before but for those who have not heard it allow me to tell it.

I was able to buy wines that were picked up at the winery in California by a wine shopper owner and driven back to his store in New York, located as it was in a resort area he was closed for 4 months of the year. Thee pristine bottle bottles formed the core of my cellar. I was able to compare these bottles, stored well but not perfectly in my cellar, with bottles that came through the regular retail channels. I was amazed at the difference. My bottles, stored passively for 15 years, are still significantly fresher than most of the similar bottles I come across.

My point, though I don't seem anywhere near making it, is that most damage is done before the wines reach the retailer's shelve. There is only so much damage a retailer can do, with exceptions, and the amount of abuse one must heap on a wine would seem to be to exceed a typical retailer's ability.

I think most of the damage to wine, speaking of cooked wine, comes from the mass shipment to and from shipping points. Sure they are shipped in a refer but how do they got to the refer and from the refer to the store? I've seen, and rejected, more hot to the touch wine that was delivered in NYC via uncooled trucks in July and August than I care to remember. That wine was not destroyed I can assure you. It was resold, maybe in NY, maybe for shipment to another state or country but it's out there waiting to unleach it's horrid stink of death on an unsuspecting consumer!

There are a lot of bacteria, molds and yeasts that are involved in the growing and making of wine. Some of them are essential to the making of good wine, many of them hinder it (which is one of my theories why wine where I currently live, in Japan, which has an environment very conducive to all sorts of beasties in those groupings, continues to make such a poor showing with their winemaking).

Brettanomyces is a yeast which creates a lot of acetic acid when grown in a glucose-rich environment. At low levels that doesn't hurt the wine, and may even add some complexity, but when it rises to a level recognizable by the wine drinker is almost universally panned, and referred to as 'brett-y', mousy, metallic and so on. Thus brettanomyces is generally viewed as a wine spoilage yeast, and its presence as a wine fault, though a very few winemakers actually play off it to build the distinctive character of their wines (Chateau Musar from the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, whom Michael Broadbent brought to everyone's attention a few years back, and Chateau de Beaucastel and its Neuf de Papes from the Rhone in southern France, spring immediately to mind).

Wine capsules and closures are terms to encompass ways in which a wine is enclosed in its vessel, whether bottle or what have you. Over the last couple of centuries the traditional closure, as wine is delivered to the consumer, has been a wooden-bark cork, and metallic capsule encasing it at the mouth of a glass bottle, though these materials (and even the mechanism itself) are undergoing considerable change these days.

More on 'brett', and efforts to understand it, here:
http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/40447