A good reminder -- or a good example of corked

What’s up with the cork? Well, it’s all that is worth showing after we opened a bottle of a 1999 Zinfandel from Lodi, CA last week. It was a great bottle of wine when we bought it four or five years ago. And then we let it sit way too long. Or it was “corked.” Your two Wine Nuts disagree on what the eventual state of this once-lovely wine was, other than it was undrinkable and we had to pour it out. It serves as a great reminder not to wait too long for that special occasion to open a favorite bottle of wine. “It’s Tuesday night and I didn’t burn dinner!” can be a fine reason to celebrate with a special bottle.

So what does “corked” mean? It is a wine term that describes a wine that has gone bad after being bottled. Sometimes you just wait too long and the wine turns to icky vinegar stuff. That’s not corked. A wine is corked when a chemical called TCA gets into the wine. TCA isn’t harmful to you or me but it does nasty things to wine. TCA is usually found in tainted corks, and since all corks can’t be tested before they are smashed into wine bottles, it’s estimated about 5% of bottles using corks end up “corked.” This is why there is now a push to use synthetic corks or screwcaps. Wineries are horrified to think you got one of those 5% bottles and hate their wine, without knowing that it’s a bad cork and not a bad wine maker.

How do you know a wine is corked? A corked wine often takes on a musty, moldy, wet dog or wet newspaper smell. Our Zin had this. The flavor of the wine will vary but it will taste very different from what you’d expect from that varietal. For instance, we expected lots of spice and pepper in our Lodi Zinfandel. Instead, we got some raisin and castor oil and a heaviness that just said, “ICK!” One of the Wine Nuts thinks this is further evidence of a corked wine. The other Nut thinks waiting 8 years to drink a Zinfandel was bad cellar management. Either way, we agreed we needed to move onto a different bottle.

And that tradition of test-driving a sip of wine at a restaurant? The main thing folks are looking for is whether or not the wine is corked, not whether or not the wine will go with their entrée.

For more info on “corked” click here.