Wine smells like wine cellar

[Predrag Pucar]

Hello guys, here comes a newbie question. My wine (made from grapes in 2018 and been stored in oak for one year) has a smell that resembles of a wine cellar. You know, when you enter a wine cellar you get hit by that smell. It also seems that the taste is a bit acidic. The wine was great after we transferred it from oak to a steel tank. Any clues on what could have happened?

 

[Rice_Guy]

I read you say a slightly moldy, wet, moist smell.

? ? ? mold ,,, but it shouldn't go away when moved to stainless
Taste will vary based on what was done before testing the sample, try to wait an hour or eat a cracker and resample. I will expect a very dry wine to have dominant acid flavors which you can get away from with back sweetening.
If you check the numbers,pH seems to shift up .2 units and TA is stable. Did the gravity go down .001?

 

[Predrag Pucar]

Sorry, I was unclear. Yes, you are right Rice_Buy, moldy is definitely something I associate with the smell.

When transferred to stainless steel from oak, it was OK. This happened november 2019 and then it was great. Now, it has changed to what I described above.

 

[Predrag Pucar]

One more note: The wine improves if the bottle stays open for hours. The moldy smell reduces to say 10-20% and I can clearly recognize the good old wine I had 10 months ago.

 

[Rice_Guy]

I am not aware of any chemical that would be produced other than mold byproducts, and we assume storage in stainless is clean, except for leakage on the gaskets of floating lids.

This is a next time question but, ,,, What was your K meta treatment?

 

[CoteRotie]

Sounds to me like it might be TCA- Did you sanitize anything with any kind of chlorine solution?