A FRIEND brought four bottles of very expensive claret for me to try. He’d bought half a dozen and was bothered that the first two tasted funny. We opened the rest, one by one.

They all had the unmistakable smell of damp cardboard – not too strong, but enough to spoil them. They tasted musty too.

They were all “corked”, that’s to say their corks, which also reeked of wet cardboard, had been tainted by trichloroanisole (TCA) – a substance produced when fungi, sometimes present in cork, comes into contact with the chlorine-containing compounds or peroxide, used to wash the cork.

There have been many attempts to devise ways of detecting TCA, but cork taint remains a huge, if not literal, headache for the wine industry. It’s probably present in at least 5% of all wines sealed by natural cork. The spoiled wine won’t harm you – it just tastes nasty.

My friend was lucky. He’d bought the wine from a reliable merchant, who readily agreed to reimburse him. All shops, including the supermarkets should do this, but I suspect that most people don’t bother, simply because we Brits don’t like to make a fuss; or we think that the wine just wasn’t very nice, and don’t realise that a dodgy cork was to blame.

Remember musty, damp cardboard – the tell-tale sign of TCA – and don’t put up with it, especially in a restaurant.

Wine can be “off” in other ways. One of them is a yeast-spoilage called Brettanomyces – “Brett” for short. It is usually killed off by sulphur, but with many wineries wishing to use less sulphur these days, Brett has become more common.

In the past we put up with it and at low levels, and even now, some argue that its clove-like smell is no bad thing if it adds complexity to a red wine. At high levels though, it has a nasty pong of Elastoplast, which no one should be prepared to tolerate. Take it back.

Not long ago, I found a dead wasp sealed inside a bottle of sweet white wine from the Loire Valley. I’m sure the insect died happy, but I couldn’t bring myself to drink the wine. Such foreign bodies, thank goodness, are rare.

A much more common problem is oxidation. Oxygen is both the friend and enemy of good wine. Without it, yeasts won’t work their magic of transforming sugar into alcohol during fermentation.

Tiny amounts help the colour of red wine to stabilise and facilitate the process whereby bitter tannins become softer; but too much oxygen means the wine will lose its fruity taste and smell and become like sherry. It’s fine if you want to make a wine like that: sherry is one of the finest drinks in the world; but most folk prefer their wines to be fruity.

It’s disconcerting if a winemaker offers a deliberately oxidised wine for sale. The last time this happened to me was at a huge wine fair in southern France earlier this year.

Richard Doughty, who is one of the doyens of the organic movement in France and who makes some of the most fabulous sweet wines you could ever wish to dip your tongue into, proffered me a dry white Bergerac.

“It’s oxidised,” he said cheerfully. I looked puzzled. “I like it like that,” he added. To which there’s no answer, other than, “I don’t much.” In my book, an oxidised blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon is weird.

Most oxidised wines, sherry and those made by Richard apart, are the result of a fault – usually a poorly fitting cork. They tend to have been left upright on a shelf too long – disastrous for natural cork, which dries out and shrinks.

A warning sign, if you have a dry white wine in a clear glass bottle, is a muddy brown colour.

Steer well clear, and be very cautious about buying old wine from any supermarket that rediscovers a job lot lost for several years behind a few crates at the back of the stock room. It shouldn’t happen, but does. I’ve come a cropper myself. Not that long ago I took a risk with some old bottles of Chablis that appeared in a local store. They were all oxidised and rather horrid. I should have known better.

Another associated problem is maderisation, which is related to oxidation, but is caused by also allowing the wine to get too hot. It’s used deliberately in the production of Madeira wine, like sherry, another great drink. Maderised dry white table wine is never acceptable.

The answer to most of these problems (Brett-spoilage is the exception) is to stick to wines sealed by screw caps and to steer clear of old wines, apart from those very few that have been made to age and which have been carefully cellared in ideal conditions.

Solid plastic corks are fine for short-term storage, but aren’t well-suited to the long haul. Natural cork is better, but there’s no guarantee that the wine is free from taint.

If you want to buy expensive, grand old wines, it’s wise to make sure, like my friend, that you have a good, responsible wine merchant.

But no one should be prepared to put up with faulty wine these days. Go on – make a fuss.

WINE OF THE WEEK

Mas des Montagnes, Côtes du Roussillon Villages, 2008, £6.99 Majestic

Delicious, rich red from the Pyrenean foothills. It smells of wild herbs, plums and ripe figs and has a soft, spicy, herby flavour. Perfect with a rich meaty stew.

WINE EXTRAS

Blason de Bourgogne Chardonnay 2009 Genuine, classy white Burgundy for just £6.99 (from Tesco or Spar). It has a lovely nutty, melony smell and a dry, lingering taste with a salty, mineral finish.

Yali Wetlands Merlot Rosé, 2010

From Chile. Not only tastes great, with strawberry and watermelon in abundance, it is made by a winery committed to the conservation of threatened wetlands, rich in biodiversity. It’s £6.99 from Majestic (or £5.59 for two).

Montes Limited Selection Pinot Noir 2009

This Chilean Pinot Noir impressed me (£9.99 at Majestic). It has concentrated raspberry, blacker berry fruits and a little spicy oak.