While the process of returning wine in a restaurant is well known, few people know that you can take back a defective wine to a store. Generally speaking, you cannot return a wine just because it didn’t meet your expectations—like when it is disappointingly tannic or flavorless or because it didn’t taste like that luscious Malbec you had after a massage on vacation two years ago.
And if you have already finished most of the wine, you should keep that bottle to yourself. Returning it would be like devouring most of that plate of lasagna at a restaurant only to send back a sliver because you thought the dish tasted funny.
The bottle needs to be mostly full, and the wine needs to be defective. As we have seen, the most likely case for spoiled wine is when it smells of wet newspaper or moldy basement. Spoilage is also commonly signaled by wine that smells flat and prunelike, evidence of wine that has been exposed to excessive heat or a bad cork seal (i.e., “cooked”).
Be advised that there is no guarantee that a seller will refund or replace the bottle, but most reputable retailers play fair when presented with the evidence and a receipt. This is doubly so if they actually recommended the bottle to you and the purchase was made relatively recently; the case is more difficult if the bottle sat in your closet for five years before you opened it.
Finally, don’t worry that you are preventing that struggling mom-and-pop merchant from paying their next rent bill: they can typically pass the cost of a defective wine back to the producer.