So, say you open a bottle of wine, one sniff tells you its corked, one taste confirms it.
Dump or drink? Does it depend on how much it cost?
I’ve been looking forward to a nice bottle of Morgan Double “L” Pinot for a while now. Tonight, prepare dinner, and the farkin’ bottle is corked. Not happy, but do you dump it and open an equally good bottle, suffer through it, or…
It amazes me how often I get a corked bottle. Not that its more than average, just that there is that much lost (5% avg).
On the good bottle notes, had a really nice bottle of Duckhorn Pinot (Goldeneye) recently. But, I think that my current favorite, (porch wine - everyday drinker), is either the Owen Roe Abbot’s Table or the Root 1 Cabernet.
I have wine almost every nite and I’ve had 2 corked bottles in the past 3 years. Relatively rare if the bottle is stored correctly. Plus few of the wines I buy now even have a real cork.
When I lived in Europe, I swore that some French guys would dump bottles just to look cool. Now, I’d say that my avg is about the same as is generally quoted (1 in 20 or 5%). I have a cellar, but that is not to say that it was stored properly on the way to me…
There is a big difference between bad, i.e. not drinkable, and “off”. If I get a nice bottle in a restaurant, and it is off, it goes back, at home, I drink it. If its bad, in the sink!
Most of the wines that I have are still real cork… It seems that the highest % of the fake stuff is in AU/NZ and SA, and most of my cellar is French, Italitan, and Spanish with some good CA, Chile and Arg selections thrown in.
Pretty sure. I drink a lot (interpret that as you wish) I have fewer issues at home now that I have a real wine fridge.
More of the $20 plus bottle wine I have been buying have screw tops or synthetic corks. I’m actually leaning toward purchasing those now. The world keeps changing.
Dump it. Why on earth would you drink a corked bottle? Yuck.
I buy most of my wine directly from the winery and I’ve had excellent luck. I find that wine I pick up at grocery stores can be a bit sketchy. I’m sure it has to do with how it is stored and transported.
I still average the same, (from when we had a fridge, to our cellar). I’m sure that its just a yield thing, but few of our bottles have synthetic corks, so maybe that’s our problem. I’m pretty comfortable with Europe now, and CA and South America. But my Au/Nz/Sa knowledge can improve and it seems that they embrace the synthetic cork more than the others…
see above, for me it depends upon the degree of “corked”. My yield is no different from the winery or from the store, so I’ve accepted the 5% loss, but it sucks every time I do it…
are you kidding me. why on earth would you drink a corked wine. that is a ridiculous thought. and of all the wine i bought drank, gave as gifts, only a couple of bottles were corked.
things happen, you cannot drink it or get upset over it.
something is wrong with your source, or your storage, or brands. 5% would have been a high percentage for me. i never encountered that high of a percentage in my years of a wine hobby…but i was annoyingly particular of where i bought wine, how it was transported, stored in the shop, how i stored it, etc. We wouldn’t eat at certain restaurants if their wine storage was not up to my standard, etc. perhaps these OCD methods kept my percentage lower.
So, say you open a bottle of wine, one sniff tells you its corked, one taste confirms it.
Dump or drink? Does it depend on how much it cost?
Dump, of course…and price isn’t an issue. Have you tried taking it back? My wine guy will replace a corked bottle. I honestly don’t know if everyone will, but he obviously appreciates my business and it’s one of the reasons that I tend to go there.
*It amazes me how often I get a corked bottle. Not that its more than average, just that there is that much lost (5% avg). **** ***
5% feels about right, we drink wine pretty much daily so figure one, maybe two bad bottles each month. Sadly, most people wouldn’t know a corked bottle of wine if you hung a neon sign on it.
Sadly, most people wouldn’t know a corked bottle of wine if you hung a neon sign on it.
Agreed. I was at a conference with my wife and we were at dinner with a whole bunch of people. When I finished my glass I got the bottom of a bottle that the table had been drinking. I literally had to spit it back in my glass, it was so off, and there were at least 4 others that had been drinking from that bottle. Sometimes, like in that case, it is easy to tell. But others, that are off just a bit, are tough to tell, until you open another bottle of the same.
something is wrong with your source, or your storage, or brands. 5% would have been a high percentage for me. i never encountered that high of a percentage in my years of a wine hobby…but i was annoyingly particular of where i bought wine, how it was transported, stored in the shop, how i stored it, etc. We wouldn’t eat at certain restaurants if their wine storage was not up to my standard, etc. perhaps these OCD methods kept my percentage lower.
Sadly, its not any of the above. You can certainly ruin wine with improper storage, but the only way to eliminate loss due to cork taint, is to eliminate natural cork closures… Its not uncommon to have 1 out of 12 bottles in a case bad which is likely due to cork taint. 12 out of 12, bad storage…
hmmm, sounds like you may have a supply chain issue with the storage and they are getting spoiled in transit. I’ve been a wine drinker for 30+ years, put down about 50 bottles per month at the house (with help from wife and friends) and keep 600 bottles at temperature in a climate controlled wine cellar. Probbably have had 1% of truly corked wines in that time. Now I have had many more that were cooked in transit and just off for various reasons, but a truly “corked” bottle caused by bacteria is very unusual. Also when you have a truly corked bottle there is no question that you would dump it as it is rancid and would be like drinking gasoline.
As stated in reply to others in this thread, its not a supply/storage issue. I agree that badly corked (dump) is probably lower than 5%, but cork taint which reduces the taste of the wine is definitely in that range. The folks over at Wine Spectator found that 7% of 2800 bottles had cork taint. (I think its a fungus, not a bacteria, but it doesn’t matter)
I’ve found that often, when I’m disappointed with a wine, a new bottle reveals that the 1st bottle was a bit corked.
ok, now we’re going to go with the cork discussion…
while i feel a slight impulse to debate your statement about natural cork, i no longer drink wine, so i will let it go.
back on point though, i agree with Tex and had a very similar experience and record with high drinkability in wines.
again, with my OCD methods & standards, which i hardly believe Wine Spectator could adhere to given the volume of wine they’re tasting from all kinds of sources, i never even began to approach 5% of “off”/corked wines.
moreover, i did buy direct from vineyards, and that was always wonderfully successful. i firmly believe (know) that with high standards and methods of buying/storing wine, the percentage of corked wine will be drastically lowered.
lastly, why people buy wine from a store that has fluorescent lights is beyond me. this, among a host of other things, is horrible for wine. also, i saw wine at Kroger sitting next to the display of pre-roasted hot chicken. i touched the bottles of wine, they were at least 80 degress…i called the manager to mention this problem and he said that people buy wine from the rack all the time and have never complained. can you believe that?
Is returning it to the wine store not an option? Most of the places around me will let you swap out a corked bottle for another of the same with little to no hassle.
Ditto…most reputable wine stores will replace, that’s my experience anyways. Grocery stores…very doubtful, but I don’t think I would pay more than $10-$15 at a grocery store, may grab a bottle of something mass prodcued but generally predictable that is all. Not a wine snob, just really like the service I get from wine guy.
The level of ignorance in this thread is staggering.
Corked wines have nothing to do with storage conditions. Period.
If a wine is corked, don’t dump it—return it to where you bought it (unless the cost just doesn’t justify the effort (and everyone has a different benchmark for this))—almost ANY retailer/grocery store/Costco etc will take it back & send it back to the distributor, usually no questions asked. If you bought a flawed CD player would you keep it? How about some food item that went bad WAY before the expiration date? Wine is no different—a corked bottle is inherently flawed & the flaw is unfixable & originates from the bottling line (cork). If a retailer won’t take it back, raise the issue directly with the winery or the distributor and it will be resolved. Averages in tests are between 5-10% of bottles under cork closure have some type of TCA taint—whether it is off putting enough to the end consumer so that they tell the difference & take action is unclear—lets put it this way–the % of returns is nowhere near 5%, or even 1%. Hence the industry hasn’t moved to fix the problem (except for screwcaps or alternative closures).
Storage problems, or EA, or VA or other non-specific problems are much harder to prove & win. If you buy from a grocery store & bring it back they will likely take it back no problem. Ditto any reputable wine shop, depending on the wine. ANY wine over 10 years old & it is likely caveat emptor. You bought it 2 years ago & are now finding out that it is cooked? Tough cookies. Ditto buying at auction. Reputable wine merchants will, in 99% of the cases, do what it takes to make the customer happy—unless they sourced & bought the wine directly on the gray market or from negociants, they will simply return the bottle to the distributor & demand a credit. The distributor will in turn do the same to the supplier.
I buy an increasing amount of wine from New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. Vast majority of it now sealed with screwtops and they’re fantastic. You still sometimes get a bottle that isn’t quite right but when you do you know it’s down to the way it’s been stored or transported.
Many of the Aussie winemakes actually made a deliberate strategy a few years ago of using screwtops on their top end wines and not on all their entry level wines in order to associate screwtops with quality in the minds of their customers. Definitely did the job with me - 10 years ago I’d had have been extremely suspicious if somebody turned up at a party with a bottle of screwtop wine, now I just appreciate not having to bother with a corkscrew!
