I don't have much theoretical knowledge about wine, but I like the taste. So I often get a random bottle from the wide selection at the supermarket, avoiding only the bottom line of TetraPack wine. I have noticed a few trends (e.g. I don't like Chillean wine), but it is still mostly a hit-and-miss. One of the "bah" moments I have had several times recently was fizzy wine.
I don't mean wine sold as sparkly, such as champagne or prosecco. I mean bottles which look like normal wine, which are closed with a normal cork instead of a pressure-containing plug, but on opening they turn out to have a special kind of carbonation. Not the big, rising bubbles found in soft drinks, but small bubbles which are sometimes not even visible in the glass. Sometimes they are visible, but they stand there, instead of rising. When I drink the wine, the carbonation is noticeable from the slight bite.
I don't like carbonation. It not only makes the drink more acidic (and gives it a very unpleasant soda taste when there is not enough taste to cover it, such as in sparkly water), but the physical sensation distracts from the taste. I can tolerate it in soft drinks (if I have to drink one at all), but I have higher expectations of wine.
I looked at the bottles of carbonated wine I've had, but the labels don't seem to contain an indication of whether the wine is fizzy or not. I have seen it in red and white wines, cheap and expensive ones, local and important ones, without any pattern. Am I missing some important clue? Is it printed somewhere where I don't think to look? Or is it specific for certain grape cultivars? For certain regions? How do I learn to recognize the fizziness of a wine in a closed dark bottle sitting on a shelf?
Best Answer
There are a couple of reasons why a wine would be slightly fizzy:
I'm going to have to contradict BaffledCook here: by the time a regular non-sweet wine is in the bottle, it should not have residual sugar or fizzyness, even if it's too young to drink. For standard wines, all sugar is converted in primary fermentation, and certainly none would make it through barrel-aging. So if you get a chardonnay or pinot grigio or merlot, and it's slightly fizzy, it's ruined and you should take it back to the market and exchange it.
EDIT: see discussion in comments.
SECOND EDIT: I went out and bought a 2011 white wine, and darned if BaffledCook isn't right. Very young, but otherwise good, wines can have a slight effervesence. So combine his answer and mine for 3 reasons why a wine would be slightly fizzy. Mind you, you shouldn't be drinking 2011 wines yet ... store them for a year ... but if you do, there it is.