You can’t send a wine back simply because you don’t like it. If you ordered it without asking for help, you’re assuming full responsibility for your choice, just as you would for food. If the selection was a recommendation from the wine waiter and you’re not happy with it, he may offer to find you something else, but he’s not obligated to—just as a waiter wouldn’t be expected to replace your entree with another one if it’s something he suggested.

In other instances, it’s perfectly acceptable to send the wine back, and you should expect it to be taken back without any argument.

If you ordered a wine at the same time you ordered your food, you have a reasonable right to expect that the wine will come to the table before the food arrives. If that’s the case and the wine arrives in the middle of the course, you can decline the bottle on the spot, before it’s opened.

When Good Wine Tastes Bad

It’s always a sinking feeling when you smell the splash of wine that the waiter’s poured for your tasting and find that the wine has spoiled. It might be corked (infected with TCA), or it might have turned to vinegar, or it might be refermenting. These things mean it’s ruined, and you’ll have the right to send it back. How do you recognize these faults? Like this:

• Corked wine: Sometimes it’s difficult to tell a corked wine from one that’s innocently musty, but often one whiff is all that it will take. A corked wine will smell like it’s been held in a cardboard box rather than in glass, or like an old, moldy attic. No tiling will repair this, and it won’t fade away, so you have to send it back.
• Vinegar: No wine should, by definition, smell like vinegar, so if a wine smells more appropriate for salad dressing than for sipping, send it back.
• Refermenting: Very occasionally, a wine will begin to referment in the bottle. This is an easy one to catch, as it will look fizzy, or at least bubble strangely on the tongue.

Sometimes a wine will have a vegetal or sulfurous stink to it; if it’s really bad (like it makes you cringe and pull back violently from the glass), that’s also grounds for refusal. But if it’s less disturbing than that, don’t worry it—those scents will probably dissipate as the wine sits in the glass.

If you’re not sure whether the wine is “sound,” that is, free of cork taint or any other problems, feel free to ask the wine waiter. He should be able to smell the wine and tell you. It’s his desire, of course, to see you enjoying your wine, so that you might order more and come back another time, or at least tell your friends about a great wine experience rather than a bad one at his restaurant.

It’s heartbreaking for a wine manager to clear a half-empty glass from a table at the end of the night and discover from a quick whiff that the wine was corked. There went an unhappy customer, no doubt, one whose wine troubles could have been avoided if only the wine guy had known. So speak up when you think the wine in your glass is faulty; it may well be, and then you can have it replaced.

Besides, restaurants can get a credit for the bad bottle from the distributor that sold it to them, so there’s no reason why the sommelier would want to see you drink a bad wine—and no reason you should feel guilty for sending it back.

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