Ethyl Acetate Wine Fault: The Nail Polish Remover Smell

By the Sommy Team — AI-assisted, human-edited.

Updated Sep 25, 2026

A glass of ruby red wine on a dark table with a faint wisp of aroma rising from the rim, beside an opened unlabelled bottle

Contents (11)

What Is the Ethyl Acetate Wine Fault?
What Does Ethyl Acetate Smell Like in Wine?
Is Ethyl Acetate the Same as Volatile Acidity?
How Do You Check a Glass for Ethyl Acetate?
Can Air or Decanting Fix a Nail Polish Smell?
Is Wine With Ethyl Acetate Safe to Drink?
What Causes Ethyl Acetate in Wine?
How Do Winemakers Keep Ethyl Acetate Down?
What Is the Legal Limit for Volatile Acidity?
Is a Little Volatile Acidity Ever a Good Thing?
Train Your Nose for Ethyl Acetate Tonight

TL;DR

Ethyl acetate is the ester behind a nail polish remover smell in wine. It forms when ethanol meets acetic acid, made by spoilage yeasts and air-loving bacteria. Most people notice it around 120 mg/L. It is not counted in the lab's volatile acidity figure, it is not a safety risk, and air will not fix it.

The ethyl acetate wine fault is the nail polish remover smell that sometimes rises from a glass instead of fruit. It comes from the same acetic acid that gives spoiled wine its vinegar note, yet it smells different and is measured differently.

What Is the Ethyl Acetate Wine Fault?

Ethyl acetate is an ester (a fragrant compound formed from an acid and an alcohol) made from acetic acid and the wine's own ethanol. Every wine carries a little, and at low levels it smells of pear drops. In larger amounts it reads as nail polish remover, paint thinner and glue.

Spoilage yeasts and acetic acid bacteria drive it, and those bacteria need oxygen. It is a close cousin of volatile acidity (the vinegar-smelling acid a lab measures and the law caps), yet it does not count in that figure. The fault is unpleasant but not dangerous, and air will not fix it.

What Does Ethyl Acetate Smell Like in Wine?

At low levels ethyl acetate smells sweet and fruity, like pear drops; past roughly 120 mg/L it turns into nail polish remover, paint thinner and glue. That point is the sensory threshold (the concentration at which most people can pick a smell out), though sensitivity varies from person to person.

Above it, the fruit drops into the background and a sharp, chemical note takes over. Below it, ethyl acetate is the most common ester in wine, and it is most vivid in young wines. A freshly bottled white that smells of boiled sweets owes part of that to ethyl acetate.

A glass of pale young white wine beside ripe pears and a dish of amber boiled sweets on a pale oak table

Ethyl acetate is a real industrial solvent, used in glues and in some nail varnish removers, although many removers use acetone instead. It boils at 77.1°C, well below water, so it reaches the nose before the wine reaches your lips.

Quick check

One question on what you just read

A wine passes its lab test for volatile acidity but smells of nail polish remover. Why?

Tap an answer to see how you did.

Is Ethyl Acetate the Same as Volatile Acidity?

No: the two are chemical relatives, but acetic acid smells of vinegar and ethyl acetate smells of solvent, and only acetic acid counts in the lab's volatile acidity figure. The lab number can look clean while the glass smells of glue, and a wine with high acetic acid is more likely to form ethyl acetate.

That link is why fault guides, including our volatile acidity in wine explainer, often file both under one "vinegary" heading. Each smell points to a different stage of the same spoilage chain.

Compound	What you smell	Where it comes from	Noticed at	Counted as volatile acidity?	What to do
Acetic acid	Vinegar, pickle juice, sour salad dressing	Acetic acid bacteria turning ethanol into acid with oxygen	Above about 700 mg/L; unpleasant above 1.2 to 1.3 g/L	Yes, it is the main part of the figure	Return a fresh bottle if vinegar leads; use a day-old leftover in a pan sauce
Ethyl acetate	Nail polish remover, glue, paint thinner; pear drops when faint	Acetic acid joining with ethanol, pushed by spoilage yeasts and bacteria	Around 120 mg/L	No	Return a fresh bottle if solvent leads; do not cook with it
Acetaldehyde (oxidation)	Bruised apple, nutty, flat	Oxygen reacting with the wine itself	Varies by style	No	Return a fresh still wine; expected in Sherry and Madeira

Three oxygen-linked smells side by side: what each one smells like, where it comes from, and what to do with the bottle.

Oxidation is the third smell people mix up with these two. Its bruised-apple signature is covered in oxidized wine explained.

How Do You Check a Glass for Ethyl Acetate?

Smell a fresh pour before you taste, and ask which arrives first, fruit or solvent. If solvent arrives before fruit in a freshly opened bottle, return it; if fruit leads and a faint pear-drop note sits on top, keep pouring.

Start with the glass still, a few centimetres below your nose, and take two short sniffs, because a volatile ester reaches you before the heavier aromas do. Then swirl for a few seconds and sniff again. A clean young wine gets fruitier as you swirl. A faulty one gets sharper, and the sting settles high in the nose.

Two glasses of the same red wine side by side on a stone counter, one bright and fresh, the other dull with a dried ring inside the bowl

Then taste a small sip. Ethyl acetate can leave a hot, prickly edge at the tip of the tongue, and the fruit on the mid-palate feels thin. The wider routine for every common off-note is in how to identify wine faults by smell.

At a restaurant, use the small tasting pour for this. Say "this smells of nail polish remover to me" rather than "corked", because cork taint is a different fault with a damp-cardboard smell, covered in how to tell if wine is corked.

Can Air or Decanting Fix a Nail Polish Smell?

No. Ethyl acetate is dissolved all the way through the wine, so each pour and each swirl releases more of it, and oxygen feeds the bacteria that made it. Air helps only a reduced wine (one that smells of struck match from too little air), which often clears after a few minutes of swirling.

How to smell reduction in wine covers that case. If the smell is still loud after ten minutes of swirling, stop waiting. A bottle left open for days gets worse, since the air keeps acetic acid bacteria working. If it now smells of glue, pour it out rather than cooking with it. For how long each style lasts once opened, see how long wine lasts after opening.

Is Wine With Ethyl Acetate Safe to Drink?

Yes. Ethyl acetate is present in almost all wine at low levels, and industry values it for its low toxicity, which is why it is a solvent in decaffeination as well as in glues. A faulty glass holds enough of it to bury the fruit and make the finish sting.

Wine flaws vs faults draws the line between an off-note you can live with and one you send back.

What Causes Ethyl Acetate in Wine?

Ethyl acetate forms when ethanol and acetic acid join, a reaction called esterification (an acid and an alcohol combining into an ester). A little of it happens in every wine; a fault needs a large supply of acetic acid or a busy spoilage yeast.

Wine spoilage yeasts, particularly Pichia anomala and Kloeckera apiculata, are the classic producers of excess ethyl acetate. Lactic acid bacteria and acetic acid bacteria can also produce high levels of it.

Acetic acid bacteria (microbes that turn alcohol into acetic acid) are often the reason a finished wine goes wrong. The main genera, Acetobacter and Gluconobacter, convert ethanol to acetic acid only in the presence of oxygen. Once acetic acid builds up, some of it combines with the wine's ethanol, and the glue smell follows the vinegar.

The top of an oak wine barrel in a stone cellar with its bung hole open and a glass bung resting beside it

Acetobacter strains are used as starter cultures in industrial vinegar making, so a spoiled wine runs the same process by accident. One strain isolated from spoiled red wine was named Acetobacter oeni in 2006.

The trigger is almost always air: a barrel not kept full, a leaking seal, a tank with a big gap above the wine, or a bottle left open on a kitchen counter.

How Do Winemakers Keep Ethyl Acetate Down?

By keeping air and spoilage microbes away from the wine at every step, from the crusher to the bottle. Because acetic acid bacteria need oxygen, most of the work is about denying them it, and the rest is about keeping spoilage yeasts out of tanks and barrels.

Topping up barrels, which means refilling the space left as wine evaporates through the wood, so no air pocket forms.
Sealed tanks, with tight hatches and the headspace kept small or filled with inert gas.
Sulfur dioxide, the preservative that holds back spoilage microbes; our guide to sulfites in wine explains the doses.
Clean equipment, since hoses, pumps and old barrels can carry spoilage yeasts and bacteria from one batch to the next.
Sound closures on the finished bottle, so oxygen stays out during storage.

A row of gleaming stainless steel wine tanks with their round side hatches closed in a clean winery

The fault can turn up more often in wines made with very little added sulfur, a trade-off covered in natural wine explained. If a low-intervention bottle smells of pear drops, it is doing fine; if it smells of glue before fruit, it has crossed over.

What Is the Legal Limit for Volatile Acidity?

US federal rules cap volatile acidity at 1.4 g/L for red grape wine and 1.2 g/L for other grape wine. EU rules generally cap red wine at 20 milliequivalents per litre (a chemist's unit for counting acid) and white or rosé at 18.

In grams of acetic acid that is roughly 1.2 g/L for red and 1.08 g/L for white and rosé, so the EU line for red sits a little below the US one.

The US rules add a higher cap for wine made from very ripe juice of 28 or more degrees Brix: 1.7 g/L for red and 1.5 g/L for white. A US wine over its limit must carry "substandard" or "other than standard" as part of its name on the label. If you see either phrase, the volatile acidity is above the legal line.

Neither law measures ethyl acetate, so a wine inside its limit can still smell of solvent. For how these limits compare with the points where tasters start to object, see wine fault vs style.

Is a Little Volatile Acidity Ever a Good Thing?

Sometimes, in small doses, though opinions are split on how much. Some winemakers aim for a trace because it lifts the aroma and makes ripe fruit smell fresher. Above the point where vinegar or glue leads the nose, nobody defends it.

The favourite example is the 1947 Cheval Blanc from Bordeaux, widely recognised to carry high volatile acidity; one legendary bottle does not make vinegar a virtue.

Train Your Nose for Ethyl Acetate Tonight

Pour a small glass from a bottle you are drinking tonight, cover it loosely, and leave it on the counter for two days. Then sniff it next to a fresh pour. The old glass may show a vinegar note or a solvent edge that the fresh pour lacks.

The faults hub collects every off-note guide in one place, and the Sommy app at sommy.wine builds tasting vocabulary through short courses and AI-guided tastings. Set that small glass aside tonight, before you finish the bottle.

Sources

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does my wine smell like nail polish remover?

A nail polish remover smell in wine is usually ethyl acetate, an ester that forms when ethanol joins with acetic acid. Spoilage yeasts and acetic acid bacteria drive it, and those bacteria need oxygen to work. Most people start to notice it at around 120 mg/L. If the solvent note comes before any fruit in a freshly opened bottle, the wine is faulty and worth returning.

Is ethyl acetate the same as volatile acidity?

No. They are chemical relatives, because ethyl acetate is made from acetic acid, but they smell different and are measured differently. Acetic acid smells of vinegar and is what the legal volatile acidity figure measures. Ethyl acetate smells of nail polish remover or glue and does not count toward that figure, so a wine can pass its volatile acidity test and still smell of solvent.

Is it safe to drink wine that smells of nail polish remover?

It is a quality problem, not a safety one. Ethyl acetate has low toxicity and is present in almost every wine at small levels, since it is the most common ester in wine. A wine with too much of it simply tastes sharp and unpleasant. The reason to pour it away or return it is that it no longer tastes good, not that it will harm you.

Can decanting get rid of an ethyl acetate smell?

No. Ethyl acetate is dissolved all the way through the wine, so every pour releases more of it, and a few minutes in a decanter will not strip it out. Leaving the bottle open for days makes things worse, because the acetic acid bacteria behind the fault need oxygen to work. If the smell is still loud after ten minutes of swirling, stop waiting.

What is the legal limit for volatile acidity in wine?

The limit changes with the country and the colour. US federal rules cap red grape wine at 1.4 g/L and most other grape wine at 1.2 g/L, with higher caps for wine from very ripe juice. EU rules cap red wine at 20 milliequivalents per litre and white or rosé at 18, roughly 1.2 and 1.08 g/L. Ethyl acetate itself is not part of either measurement.

Does all wine contain ethyl acetate?

Yes, in small amounts. Ethyl acetate is the most common ester in wine, and at low levels it adds to the fruity, pear-drop smell of young wines. It only becomes a fault once it passes the point where it takes over the glass, which for most people is around 120 mg/L. Below that, it is part of what makes a young wine smell lively.

Sommy Team

Founder & Wine Educator

The Sommy Team is building the world's most approachable wine education app, helping beginners develop real tasting skills through structured courses and AI-guided practice.

Keep Reading

A hand holding a wine cork up to the light with a half-full wine glass blurred in the background, suggesting a sommelier checking for cork taint

Wine BasicsApril 9, 202611 min read

How to Tell If Wine Is Corked: Signs, Smell, and What to Do

Corked wine is the most common wine fault, but most people have never been taught to spot it. Here is exactly what corked wine smells like, why it happens, and how to handle it at home or in a restaurant.

Sommy Team

Two wine glasses on a stone bench, one bright ruby and the other shifted to dull amber-brown, illustrating the visible color change from oxidation

Wine BasicsApril 29, 202612 min read

Oxidized Wine: What It Smells Like and How It Happens

Oxidized wine smells of bruised apple, sherry, and roasted nuts because oxygen has converted ethanol into acetaldehyde. Here is exactly what oxidation does, when it is a fault, and when it is the whole point of the bottle.

Sommy Team

A glass of dark red wine on a wooden barrel head with a leather saddle blurred in the background, suggesting the barnyard and leather aromas associated with brett

Wine BasicsApril 29, 20269 min read

What Causes Brett in Wine? Smell, Fault and What to Do

Brett is a wild yeast, Brettanomyces, that turns leftover sugar into barnyard and band-aid smells. What causes it, when it counts as a fault, how labs test for it, and what a drinker can do.

Sommy Team