bleu cheese smell from wine?

[jattea]

I am just starting to really get into wine. I'm learning appellations,
varietals, lingo... I'm starting to be able to discern different flavors,
etc..

yesterday at a restaraunt I ordered a South African pinotage, a varietal I
wasn't previously aware of. when i tasted it, I noticed the distict smell
of roquefort cheese, but other than that, the wine tasted fine. As I had
more, I worried that the wine might be bad, and that the smell was fungus or
bacteria.

What was that smell? Is it a common scent for wines of this varietal?
Should I have sent it back?

[wondersofwine]

I see no one has answered your question yet. I don't have much experience with Pinotage but think it may be a little funkier than other varietals. Still, I doubt that bleu cheese is the usual nose for this wine.

[Innkeeper]

Hi Jattea, and welcome to the Wine Board. Also don't have much Pinotage experience, but is the smell anything like wet newspapers? If so, the wine was corked.

[hotwine]

I didn't know how to answer the bleu cheese descriptor, either. Since the wine "tasted fine", I leaned toward a Pinotage characteristic, but have very little experience with that vaietal (one label, in fact.... Fairview .... and it doesn't show bleu cheese on the nose.)

[jmcginley1]

Pinotage is one of those wines I keep hearing about, but have yet to try. Still, "blue cheese" is a very odd scent to encounter.

[wdonovan]

Maybe the smell didn't come from the wine but something else..... Waiter handled cheese before opening the bottle......who knows?

[gwendolin]

I served the Fairview Pinotage 2002 at a wine dinner last night, and it definitely smelled like cheese, a cross between blue cheese & fresh cheddar. Guests at the dinner picked up on this without my mentioning it, so it was definitely there. I hadn't noticed it in other pinotages I've tried, but it is a funky grape. They tried to bring out the best in Pinot Noir and Cinsault, and ended up with something completely different!

[Bucko]

Hmmmm ... sounds like a wine that WW helped to stomp. [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/biggrin.gif[/img] [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/biggrin.gif[/img] [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/biggrin.gif[/img]