WineLovers Discussion Group

Like most of you, I assume, my first inclination is to either pour a corked wine down the drain or stick the cork back in and return it to the store for a refund. But, have you ever noticed that a wine is slightly corked and decided to drink it anyway?

Am asking since that is what is happening tonight. One of my lovely Jackson Triggs Shiraz from British Columbia is slightly corked. While it is evident on the nose, it really isn't evident in the mouth, probably since it is such a big wine, so I am drinking it anyway.

Thoughts?

No Thanks....

If it isn't a gagger, I'll probably drink it. Corked or "smells like shit" or whatever.

I suppose that eliminates me from the ranks of the cognoscenti (those who know they smell).

Yes. I went to a holiday party where the 'best' wine was a generic Beaujolais. The mild corkiness gave it some character!

No.

If I notice that a wine is corked, it's usually because something smells wrong (i.e. unpleasant, annoying) about it. So I would not want to drink it.

Of course I am sure that I have missed a few bottles of corked wine in my day.

The moment I determine that a wine is corked is the moment I decide I don't want to drink it. I find the smell and taste repulsive. Incidentally, with low level taint I get the TCA on the palate rather than the nose. I may take a few sips for the sake of politeness while I work out where to dump the glass - that's all.

OTOH I could happily drink a wine with brett, VA or oxidation - only occasionally have I refused to drink an oxidised wine.

Cork taint is a curiously subjective and suggestive phenomenon in borderline cases. At tastings, as soon as someone says that TCA is there, at once nearly everyone else present agrees and discards the wine.

In my household my wife is more sensitive to TCA than me, so it happens that we reject quite a few bottles where I am very doubtful, though once she mentions it then I think that I too can detect it and my enjoyment is spoiled. She is usually right, BTW, proved by the fact that bottles of the same then brought up from the cellar are generally much cleaner and more fruity.

It has happened though rarely that, although everyone agrees that there is a faint whiff of TCA, we finish the bottle because the wine is fundamentally so good that the faint taint does not spoil it.

I used to tolerate corked wine. The first time I experienced it, I thought the funky flavor was interesting. But after time, I reject any hint of corkiness. I don’t think it is a matter of taste as much as principle. Taking a page out of a purist’s book, I like to think what I am drinking is as terroir driven as possible. Someone more catholic than I might argue that the world is the terroir, which includes corked wine.

Bruce Hayes wrote:But, have you ever noticed that a wine is slightly corked and decided to drink it anyway?

Put me in the "dump it" category. Life's too short to drink bad wine, or spoiled wine. Frankly, I rarely go to the trouble of taking the wine back for a refund or exchange, but I'll do it occasionally if the wine was pricey.

I usually return it to where I bought it for a refund or exchange. The merchant can return it to the distrubuter. I was in retail wine sales for several years and keeping a customer happy was my priority. If you have a good relationship with your wine store you shouldn't have any trouble.

I've enjoyed wines that others thought were corked. I've drunk wines that others thought were corked- I didn't get the TCA, but found wine muted, and assume it was under my threshold. But once I think it's corked I really can't get past that, even if fairly mild.

I have taken back bottles if it was a recent purchase. I generally don't bother with cellared wines.

Generally, if a wine is corked enough for me to notice, it's pretty corked. But there have been times when the taint was faint, or I wasn't sure, and the wine was interesting if not pristine and too old reasonably to return. For the most part, though, I dump.

I never do at all.

Plus with the very liberal return policy at the SAQ (Societé d'Alchool du Quebec) and the higher prices we pay (and the huge profits they generate), I don't think twice about it. I return them without hesitation.

Bruce, I used to drink corked wine all the time until I found out what it was by joining this group. Until I began reading here, I thought some wines just tasted like wet old newspaper; add to that the fact that I am apparently quite taint-tolerant. I have become more aware , however, and, unless the taint is too strong, which is more and more often it seems, I do not drink corked wines any more.

I have very poor sensitivity to TCA, so it's not uncommon for me to drink a wine that someone else will not touch. They often don't taste or smell all that bad to me. If it does taste bad to me for any reason, though, I will usually not drink it.

If it's a big and meaty wine and the TCA isn't too bad, I'll do the baggie thing and and at least try it the next day. The plastic wrap seems to strip some of the character even if it deadens the taint taste, tho, so I usually don't finish the bottle.

Dave

I dump them. But I have a high TCA sensitivity and a low TCA tolerance.

At the Yakima Valley barrel tasting many years back, I encountered a winery employee who was one of those persons blessed (I can't really call it a curse, except perhaps in his job) with the total inability to sense TCA. He poured me a glass that was positively reeking of mouldy cardboard and stale water in a toilet. When I said, "Phew! This wine is badly corked," he said in perfect honesty that he didn't smell or taste anything wrong with it. I asked him to call over a co-worker, who took one sniff, let out an exclamation of disgust, took the bottle away, and replaced it with another one (perfectly OK), with profuse apologies to us.

From a consumer perspective, I'M the one who's cursed. As a wine lover, I wish I were a TCA non-taster.

-Paul W.

Sure. And if I get my fingers jammed in a car door, I leave them there too.


So, obviously, no, I don't.

Paul Winalski wrote:At the Yakima Valley barrel tasting many years back, I encountered a winery employee who was one of those persons blessed (I can't really call it a curse, except perhaps in his job) with the total inability to sense TCA. He poured me a glass that was positively reeking of mouldy cardboard and stale water in a toilet. When I said, "Phew! This wine is badly corked," he said in perfect honesty that he didn't smell or taste anything wrong with it. I asked him to call over a co-worker, who took one sniff, let out an exclamation of disgust, took the bottle away, and replaced it with another one (perfectly OK), with profuse apologies to us.

But where's the ending? You offer a glass of the clean wine to the non-TCA taster, and ask them if it smells/tastes the same as the contaminated one. And the answer is...?

cheers,
Graeme

Graeme, I personally know someone who has a total inability to smell/taste TCA. It's Dorli Muhr, Austrian wife of Dirk van der Niepoort. Of course she realizes the difference when she tastes both samples alongside — the corked sample showing less fruit —, but she not able to identify a corked bottle right away.

Isn't drinking a corked wine just a form of masochism? Like eating only slightly 'off' meat, or marrying a lady that you think might change even though she is a harridan and her mother a nightmare on wheels.

There are two reasons I've seen where people will drink wine they know is substandard.

1 - you can't tell the difference (many good tasters are not very sensitive to TCA)

2 - you can, but you really want a drink and that's all you have, so you'll compromise (warning - incipient alcohol reliance possible here)

(or 3 - you give it to the in-laws that came to dinner while surruptitiously sipping water yourself)

To my way of thinking, a corked wine, even a mildly corked one, either goes back to the store or into the stew pot to tenderise some cut of meat.

To the original poster - many of Jackson Triggs wines are bottled under plastic cork - was this one a real cork? This tank farm factory have never been a producer I bother with, though I try their wines from time to time, coming away uniformly unimpressed - workaday average at best. I must say I haven't seen many reports of spoilage though.

PS - everone owes it to themselves to at least once experience a corked wine side by side with a new bottle that isn't corked so they can see the difference. The insensitive people won't notice the TCA - they'll just think that the wine isn't that good, but they will see the difference between that and an untainted bottle.

Bill Spohn wrote:To my way of thinking, a corked wine, even a mildly corked one, either goes back to the store or into the stew pot to tenderise some cut of meat.

I wouldn't reccomend the latter unless, perhaps, you reduce the wine first. I once made an absolutely disgusting sauce from corked wine, thinking the TCA would boil off as it was so volatile. On another board, Nayan pointed out that fats will absorb (or is that adsorb?) TCA and take on its flavour, so you need to get rid of the TCA by heating before letting it anywhere near meat fat. Not that I have dared try that yet, so I cannot confirm from personal experience that it works.

Fair comment, Steve. A very mildly corked wine goes into our marinating store; a really TCA affected one goes down the drain or back to the store. One good thing about having a government run liquor system - they don't balk when you bring back a wine you bought 5 years earlier.

Bill Spohn wrote:To the original poster - many of Jackson Triggs wines are bottled under plastic cork - was this one a real cork?

It was real cork Bill. It was also the Proprietor's Grand Reserve, which is their top of the line wine (I know that most of their every day stuff is junk) and, finally, I have enjoyed a number of other bottles of this wine, as well at the PGR Meritage and Merlot, all from BC.

Michael Pronay wrote:Graeme, I personally know someone who has a total inability to smell/taste TCA. It's Dorli Muhr, Austrian wife of Dirk van der Niepoort. Of course she realizes the difference when she tastes both samples alongside — the corked sample showing less fruit —, but she not able to identify a corked bottle right away.

That's pretty much exactly how it works for me.