Faults

The capability: you can catch a mild fault, which is the one that passes.

Prerequisites: Modules 15, 28.

The practice

Build a fault reference. Acquire or identify a corked bottle and a heat-damaged one. Taste them against sound wine.

Then taste a mildly corked bottle specifically — because the severe case is obvious and the mild one simply mutes the wine and reads as dull.

Then run a threshold check across the staff, per Module 15 — cork taint detection thresholds vary substantially and a disagreement may be two honest reports.

And practice the resolution: on faults, defer to the most sensitive detector.

The reference

Sound wine alongside, always. A fault tasted alone teaches almost nothing.

What you are building

Recognition of the state that passes.

A mildly faulted bottle reads as uninteresting rather than as wrong — which means it will be served unless someone is specifically checking, and that is what the open-check exists for.

Verification and boundary

Blind: identify the faulted bottle in a flight of four.

Boundary: this confers no wine credential.