Corked in San Ramon
July 25, 2008
Does your wine smell like a wet newspaper? If it does, you’ve probably been corked.
I experienced what I believe to be my first “corked” bottle of wine last night. After opening the bottle, I poured a small amount into my glass for a taste. I immediately noticed the wine was cloudy. I held the glass up to the light and it was very difficult to see through. I shoved my nose in the glass and that’s when I got another surprise - the smell of wet newspaper. It smelled just plain ol’ musky and moldy.
A wine reference site estimates that as many as 3% to 7% of all wines have contamination at levels that can be detected by consumers. Most of the time a wine is deemed “corked” when it was bottled with a contaminated cork, but wine can even be considered “corked” due to contaminated barrels or other contaminated wood during its aging process. The result of the contamination leads to that unfortunate damp newspaper smell. When you taste a corked wine, it tends to be very astringent.
Including being corked, there are four most common defects that could ruin a bottle of wine. According to an article in New York Magazine, these defects are when the wine is corked, oxidized, maderized or refermented.
Being a member of the corked club is not what irks me -it’s the fact that I had to waste my whole bottle of wine.
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