Cleanskins - How to Judge a Good Cleanskin.

Well to be honest I taste a lot of cleanskins and out of every 10 that I taste I reject 8 because of being faulty or just to expensive.

As a rule the criteria that I use for judging cleanskins is

1. They must not be faulty that means
1. Chemically sound no horrible odours
2. The corks must be good
3. The wine has not passed its optimum drinking age. (shot, passed)
4. The cases are not falling apart
2. The wine has to have body and flavour, I have tasted wine which just tasted like water and alcohol really.
3. The wine has to be better than a comparable labelled product for the same money. Eg lets say I am tasting a chardonnay cleanskin for $10, I would compare it to say Deakin Chardonnay at the same money. If the Cleanskin is not substantially better than the Deakin I would not buy the wine.
4. Regardless of how good the wine is you have to enjoy it to the last drop. When I buy a wine I generally drink the wine over 2-3 days just to see how it olds up with a little bit of air. If the wine falls apart after a day I will not buy it as it could fall apart in the bottle after 6 months.
5. Always buy from a source that you trust, this is just a rule that I use because there are a lot of sharks out their and you need to keep on your toes when buying wine sometimes.

I hope this guide is of help to you as this is the criteria that I have been using for 25 years and it has not let me down yet.