[Sca-cooks] Is this a wine myth?

[Faoileann]

I asked my lord, who is a vintner, and he is of the following opinion:

I believe it to be a myth.  If wine is fermented to completion, when it goes
off you end up with vinegar.  This flavor is hardly maskable by adding
spice; it's still vinegar.  This may be where our spiced vinegars originated
though.

As for the adding of sulfites, I don't add them, and as far as I know it's
illegal to add them in most major European wine producing countries.  That
being the case, we should still have the spoilage problem in the cases where
the chemical is not added.  Again, if this is the case, why did she claim
the this practice started because of spoiled wine the Victorian era when we
have documentation that it was done before then?  Did wine start spoiling
when Queen Victoria was crowned?

Giles fitz Alan