Corked Wine - what if only you get it?

[Craig Camp]

You are a guest at a business dinner in a fine restaurant. The host orders wine, tastes and approves it, and the wine is poured out. You raise the glass to your nose and are greeted the unmistakable moldy smell of a corked wine. The wine is corked to be sure - and badly corked. Meanwhile a few of the other guests compliment the wine.

What to you do? Do you inform the host the wine is bad and potentially embarrass them in front of their guests? Announce you are allergic to red/white wine?

[mongo_jones]

slap the host and turn the table over?

[Mark Sommelier]

You are a guest at a business dinner in a fine restaurant. The host orders wine, tastes and approves it, and the wine is poured out. You raise the glass to your nose and are greeted the unmistakable moldy smell of a corked wine. The wine is corked to be sure - and badly corked. Meanwhile a few of the other guests compliment the wine.

What to you do? Do you inform the host the wine is bad and potentially embarrass them in front of their guests? Announce you are allergic to red/white wine?

Craig,

Certainly it depends where you are dining. If it was where I work, I would have fetched another bottle before the host even tasted it. I don't taste every wine, but I do sniff every cork. The cork always gives it away. Given the scenario you mention, if no savvy sommelier is around, it could be awkward.

[Craig Camp]

You are a guest at a business dinner in a fine restaurant. The host orders wine, tastes and approves it, and the wine is poured out. You raise the glass to your nose and are greeted the unmistakable moldy smell of a corked wine. The wine is corked to be sure - and badly corked. Meanwhile a few of the other guests compliment the wine.

What to you do? Do you inform the host the wine is bad and potentially embarrass them in front of their guests? Announce you are allergic to red/white wine?

Craig,

Certainly it depends where you are dining. If it was where I work, I would have fetched another bottle before the host even tasted it. I don't taste every wine, but I do sniff every cork. The cork always gives it away. Given the scenario you mention, if no savvy sommelier is around, it could be awkward.

Unfortunately many (most) expensive restaurants do not have professional sommeliers like you to that actually check the wine. What about Morton's and Ruth Chris - typical business dinner spots where it is easy to run up a big wine bill? I certainly would not rely on the captain at Morton's to be able to spot a corked wine! This experience is more common than Citronelle.

[Phil Ward]

In my case, a business dinner is about wine so it would be no problem. If I was not in the business, I would mention it to the hostess/host of the dinner as I would hope they would not want to serve their colleagues a corked bottle of wine. To me it becomes an educational tool for all in attendance.

Phil

[MobyP]

This is a valuable point, surely. I recently tasted corked wine for the first time - and that was only because there were two bottles. The difference? (For an amateur) A certain mustiness, slightly heavier on the palate, rounding off the sharper edges and crisper notes that I picked up in the second wine. Without the second, I would never have known.

So - how do we know if a wine is corked? What are the variations? From slightly corked, to completely, what is the range of tastes to expect?

[Chris Kissack]

This sort of thing happened to me last year, although I was dining with some family members so there was no problem with speaking up. When the wine came the red was poured on the other side of the table, which was a mistake - I should have made sure all the wines came to me first - but I had slipped into a relaxed frame of mind and unfortunately slipped up. When the bottle worked its way round - by which point I think we were tucking into starters - it was certainly not right. And with a little more air it was obviously corked. I felt rotten because people were well into the meal, and some were already drinking the red and proclaiming it as very good. All this could have been avoided by me checking the wine first. (NB: The problem was compounded by the second bottle (of the same wine) - which was also corked. Obviously a bad batch of corks!)

I guess at a business dinner your action would depend on how you related with the host and other diners. Is upsetting your host likely to spoil a potential deal - if so I would keep quiet. Also, if embarrassment is likely to be the result, again I would keep quiet. Sometimes the education of someone else's palate is not a priority. BUt if these are people that you know well then it could easily be turned into an interetsing topic of discussion where everybody learns something, and the outcome is that you get something decent to drink!

BWs

Chris

[Chris Kissack]

Moby

I've pasted the following regarding corked wine from my site:

How to spot one: As with cooked wines, corkiness may appear in a spectrum from barely noticeable to very obvious. A subtly corked wine may appear fruitless, a little unbalanced, uninteresting, but without any definite signs of cork taint. Leaving the wine for a few hours, or even days, may make the unpleasant aromas characteristic of a corked wine more apparent. By this time, however, it's likely you've either drunk it or poured it down the sink. More obviously corked wine has aromas of wet cardboard, mushrooms, mould and smelly socks! The palate (if you get that far) will taste similar, will lack fruit, and is often quite bitter.

BWs

Chris

[Craig Camp]

Here is a link to Chris's longer explanation and a good look at other wine maladies:

http://www.thewinedoctor.com/advisory/tastefaulty.shtml

[Winot]

On the subject of other wine maladies, I was at a dinner in a London restaurant at the weekend and ordered a second bottle of a German Kabinett riesling. It tasted wrong compared to the first one (of which I still had some in my first glass) -- much more acidic and less fruit. To my (fairly uneducated) palate it didn't taste corked though. The waiter agreed it was "disgusting" (his words) and replaced the bottle straight away.

Can anyone enlighten me as to what the problem was, as it doesn't seem to fit in with any of the problems highlighted on Chris's site?

[Craig Camp]

On the subject of other wine maladies, I was at a dinner in a London restaurant at the weekend and ordered a second bottle of a German Kabinett riesling. It tasted wrong compared to the first one (of which I still had some in my first glass) -- much more acidic and less fruit. To my (fairly uneducated) palate it didn't taste corked though. The waiter agreed it was "disgusting" (his words) and replaced the bottle straight away.

Can anyone enlighten me as to what the problem was, as it doesn't seem to fit in with any of the problems highlighted on Chris's site?

It sounds very much like a wine in the early stages of corkyness. The fruit flavors are the first thing to go. Was this a young wine recently bottled?

[Winot]

Craig,

Yes, I think it was a 2002.

W.

[Craig Camp]

My guess would be that it was indeed corked.

[Brad Ballinger]

There are so many "it depends" factors at play here -- the size of the dinner party, the importance of the business being conducted, my relationship with the host, etc. -- that it is hard to offer a one-size-fits-all response.

I've had this happen once. The host ordered a magnum of 1990 Veuve Clicquot, tasted, and accepted the bottle. It's vintage Champagne, so many people are going ga-ga over it. I take one whiff and suspect it's corked. I taste it, and it definitely is. I was sitting far enough away, and this was a large enough gathering, that I was able to drink enough water, surreptitiously dump it into my water glass, and then pretend my glass was dirty and ask for more water.

After the dinner, the host asked what I thought of the wines. I then mentioned that the VC was corked. He commented that no one else had said anything. I replied it wasn't horrible corked, but flawed nonetheless and that I'm very sensitive to it. I then overheard him telling another person, "Brad said the Champagne was corked." The other person affirmed, "it was."

I didn't say anything up front because it wasn't my event, it wasn't the time to educate the table, and any other reason you'd care to make up.

But what did happen as a result, is that the host asked me to conduct a tasting for him and his staff to educate them on wine. And there happened to be a corked bottle there, so everyone got a chance to experience it.

[KatieLoeb]

Best description I ever heard for this was, "Eeeewww! It smells like a dirty hot tub!" Brilliant description I thought, since it smells a bit chlorinated, a bit "sweaty", a bit like balled up wet towels left lying around too long and a bit like stagnant water. Also the taste is indeed muted. It's as if someone threw a shroud over the fruit element in the wine. Of course the latter could also be from being opened too long, in the case of a by-the-glass wine.

As to how to best handle that potentially humiliating tableside moment - well that depends on how well you know the host, and whether or not they would welcome your commentary, whether they're your best friend or a complete stranger. Some folks just don't want to hear anyone else's opinions, regardless of how well intentioned or informed they might be.

[Chris Kissack]

Winot

I would agree with Craig - I think you wine was probably corked. The lack of fruit and unpleasant palate (I have sometimes found corked wines to be bitter or sharp tasting) would suggest this even if the contamination is not sufficient to produce a corked aroma. It's these bottles that are the most difficult to call.

BWs

Chris

[wnissen]

This is a situation in which I would keep my mouth clamped shut. There's just no way to fix the problem. The second you speak up, everyone who liked the wine feels like a dummy (and nothing makes people feel like dummies than the intimidating world of wine) and the host feels doubly bad. Unless you have a chance to make the first comment on the wine, thus educating everyone without making them lose face, the polite thing to do is smile and sip slowly. Even a moderately corked wine is not undrinkable.

Walt

[Duncan]

This is a situation in which I would keep my mouth clamped shut. There's just no way to fix the problem. The second you speak up, everyone who liked the wine feels like a dummy (and nothing makes people feel like dummies than the intimidating world of wine) and the host feels doubly bad. Unless you have a chance to make the first comment on the wine, thus educating everyone without making them lose face, the polite thing to do is smile and sip slowly. Even a moderately corked wine is not undrinkable.

I would say the exact opposite applies. Very many people, even if they drink wine quite often, don't know how to tell if a wine is corked, and they know that. If you speak up, then you have an instant topic for conversation, and if you get the staff to leave at least one of the faulty glasses everyone can have a good sniff of both wines, learn the difference, and decide for themselves which they prefer.

If you have enough people at the table for the situation as described, then the chances are that there was more than one bottle poured, so the people who declare themselves happy maybe got wine from a good bottle, and the chances are that other people who might be unsure will let themselves be talked out of complaining.

[JudyB]

If you have enough people at the table for the situation as described, then the chances are that there was more than one bottle poured, so the people who declare themselves happy maybe got wine from a good bottle, and the chances are that other people who might be unsure will let themselves be talked out of complaining.

And what Duncan forgot to say is that we had exactly this situation when we were eating dinner as part of a wine-tasting weekend at Center Parcs in England.

The waiters poured for the ladies first and then for the men (about 10-12 people on the table).

Duncan tasted his wine and said how nice it was and I tasted mine and thought it tasted odd. Further discussion with the person running the weekend showed that the first bottle was corked and the second one was fine... leading to an impromptu discussion of corks vs screw tops from Oz Clarke.

[giovanni]

The situation Craig describes raises not only issues relevant to wine appreciation, but also sensitive social questions. And in my view, depending on who you're with, the social considerations may trump the desire to flag a corked wine --- it may not be worth embarassing your fellow diners.

What I find more perplexing (and irritating) when it comes to corked wine is the ignorance and attitude of self-proclaimed "sommeliers"/"wine service professionals" who either can't recognize the flaw themselves or if they do, prefer to try to assuage or, worse yet, intimidate their objecting customers into believing that it's "the style of the wine." Since a mildly corked wine can be a close call, even for an experienced wine drinker, this general bad attitude can have a chilling effect on customers' willingness to complain. Obviously I'm generalizing here --- many restaurants follow the credo "the customer is always right", and in fact gladly take back bottles from unhappy customers even when the wine is actually fine!! But they are too few and far between.

[mdibiaso]

Giovanni

I agree that many restaurants really don't have people that understand about wine and could identify a corked bottle. But on the other hand, I think many customers who frequent the vast majority of "everyday" restaurants would probably feel cheated if the person opening the wine, in grand French tradition, poured themselves a small glass and tasted it before letting the customer taste it. Especially if the wine was on the expensive side ("hey that waiter just drank 3 dollars of my wine").

In my opinion true wine service means that the customer should never have to send back a bottle because a knowledgable staff member would taste every bottle and find the bad ones before the customer. And if two bottles of the same wine are opened at the same time they taste both. The tasting is not to see, hey do I like this wine, it is to see is this bottle damaged. Therefore you taste every bottle. But the reality is my "dream" world would probably be many customers' nightmare.

[bleudauvergne]

We've recently come into opening some magnificent wine, part of the batch we bought had infected corks. This comes from the cork, not the storage conditions or anything we did or didn't do. It's just this one wine. The contamination varies with each one we open, and it has been so disspointing. The bottles that aren't corked are simply magnificent.

The sense of loss that comes when you open and smell that overwhelming damp stink sticks with you. I think that once a person has come across a bottle of wine from their cellar that is thoroughly corked, after all that anticipation and feelings of loss, even really mild cases of it become easy to spot. You become sensitive to it.

The other night my husband opened a bottle fresh from the cave to let breathe before guests arrived. I could tell right away it was corked but he didn't believe me until it warmed up a bit and the ick was unmistakable. I think that a person's history with corked wine can make a difference in their sensitivity to it. The people who say they can't identify corked wine clearly haven't ever had the misfortune to run across it, because it is unmistakable.

At the business dinner, if the host doesn't taste the corked wine at first, it just means they have a different sensitivity to it, or maybe the wine was cold. I would most likely slip away from the table and have a word with the waiter or sommelier - otherwise do nothing, wait for the next bottle, find some way to get rid of what was in my glass the best I could.

[adrian1]

"Social Niceties", in other words good manners, definitely do trump corked wine. Unless one is with good friends it's best to "Bite the Bullet"..or the cork in this case, and keep silent about the corked wine.

With that said I am completely frustrated with the number of wines that end up being corked. There is nothing more irritating then opening the only bottle of wine you have on a Sunday evening when all the liquor stores are closed and finding it corked!

Following is part of an email I received this week in response to my complaints about a certain French producer's frequently corked wines. I have left out the producer's name.

"As you are probably aware, estimates of faulty wines due to TCA contamination vary widely, but about 5% is the average number considered by most in the industry. ******* holds the ********* in high regard and therefore would not be cutting corners in its production. Without expensive laboratory equipment TCA is almost impossible to detect until it has contaminated the wine. Hence the shift by many producers globally to synthetic and screw cap closures."

[Jmahl]

Without claims to any special expertise, I’m just an enthusiastic amateur at best; I believe that “corking” is over diagnosed. In my experience the problem is not “corking” but often “cooked wine.” If you read Kermit Lynch’s book he talks about his earliest shipments from France arriving in California in a very different condition that when he tasted them in France. Sure, they were shipped in un-temperature controlled containers through the Panama Canal and they were cooked.

The problem often is the improper storage and shipping of wine. It travels in un-temperature controlled trucks, is stored in hot warehouses and stockrooms, sits in cases in kitchen corridors and comes to the table “cooked.”

As to your problem, if you are not ordering, just drink it if its not too bad – or just pass. Tomorrow there will be another bottle.

Good drinking,

Jmahl

[JohnL]

Without claims to any special expertise, I’m just an enthusiastic amateur at best; I believe that “corking” is over diagnosed.  In my experience the problem is not “corking” but often “cooked wine.”  If you read Kermit Lynch’s book he talks about his earliest shipments from France arriving in California in a very different condition that when he tasted them in France.  Sure, they were shipped in un-temperature controlled containers through the Panama Canal and they were cooked. 

The problem often is the improper storage and shipping of wine. It travels in un-temperature controlled trucks, is stored in hot warehouses and stockrooms, sits in cases in kitchen corridors and comes to the table “cooked.”

As to your problem, if you are not ordering, just drink it if its not too bad – or just pass.  Tomorrow there will be another bottle.

Good drinking,

Jmahl

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If anything--IMOP--corked wines are "under diagnosed."

Corked wine and "cooked" wine are two very distinct and different maladies.

Corked wine is easily recognized by anyone with some experience with it. (I believe that most anyone can detect it if they simply know what they are looking for).

As for "cooked" wine; first, Kermit Lynch's book was written in 1988 it is still a fine read but there is much less mishandled fine wine on the market these days--thanks in no small part to people like Mr Lynch (one still needs to be careful and buy from reputable sources).

Recognizing a mishandled wine can be a bit more difficult and require more knowledge and tasting experience than recognizing a corked wine.

Corked wine is a fairly pervasive problem, i have seen estimates of as high as 10% of all wine. my own experience is probably around 5%.

It is not very difficult to detect --it either exists or it does not-there is no middle ground (one can not be a "little" pregnant).

As some other posters noted, I am also surprised that even in very fine restaurants wine servers do not "inspect" the wine before serving it to the host for his or her approval.

A restaurant should do everything in their power to ensure that every wine they sell --especially expensive and/or well aged wines--is in peak condition.

As for the dilemma at hand, if one is not the host, one must act according to their best judgment.

I would suggest that a bit of a white lie and a will to be daring may work in cases like Brad's--I would discreetly approach the host---"sir (or madame) I have enjoyed this wine in the past and I must say, this is a perfect choice for the occasion. However I recall that the wine I had was showing much better than this and I do know there are some bottle variation problems with this wine--may I suggest that we have the sommelier see if they agree and can provide a better bottle for us?"

Ok--I did note one must be daring here--the risk is the host tells you to f--K off. Or awards you several brownie points for being upfront and ballsy as well as being a wine maven.

the kind of guy that is looking out for the boss's or clients best interests.

Of course you also have to be ready to approach the restaurant wait staff and make sure a "scene" does not develop.

Also--one probably should not try this if one is the guest at a mob dinner and your host is Tony Soprano (or the Joe Pesci character in Goodfellas).