Missing Cork

[markabauman]

Recently bought a mixed case of wine at a reputable place in NJ, then headed into NYC. Put the case on its side. After shopping for a while, when I returned to the car, I smelled a distinct wine aroma and upon examination, found liquid-fortunately on the rubber mat of the rear deck lid of the SUV. I uprighted the case and when I arrived back home, I discovered that the bottle (not expensive, but from a decent Italian producer) had the foil in place, but no cork! I'm sure those machines can foul up once in awhile, but that's a first for me. Anyone ever had the same experience?

[JohnL]

Recently bought a mixed case of wine at a reputable place in NJ, then headed into NYC. Put the case on its side. After shopping for a while, when I returned to the car, I smelled a distinct wine aroma and upon examination, found liquid-fortunately on the rubber mat of the rear deck lid of the SUV. I uprighted the case and when I arrived back home, I discovered that the bottle (not expensive, but from a decent Italian producer) had the foil in place, but no cork! I'm sure those machines can foul up once in awhile, but that's a first for me. Anyone ever had the same experience?

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Yeow!

I never heard of this happening but your possible explanation re: the machine "missing" a bottle makes sense.

It would be nice if you alerted the retailer so they can be on the alert for more of these! They in turn can alert the distributor/importer.

[Jensen]

I've had a similar sort of experience.

Once this summer, I used my knife to remove the top of the foil and found no cork inside.

Turns out I'd bought wine with a screw cap...

[FistFullaRoux]

I've had a similar sort of experience.

Once this summer, I used my knife to remove the top of the foil and found no cork inside.

Turns out I'd bought wine with a screw cap...     

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The $1.99 price tag didn't clue you in?

[jayt90]

I've had a similar sort of experience.

Once this summer, I used my knife to remove the top of the foil and found no cork inside.

Turns out I'd bought wine with a screw cap...     

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The $1.99 price tag didn't clue you in?

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The maximum i have spent on a screw cap wine is $25, and it keeps climbing.

[David McDuff]

All screw cap jokes aside, yes, I've seen this happen on more than one occasion. The thing that always amazed me is that the wine made it all the way from the winery in Italy (they've always been Italian wines, btw), on and off trucks, in and out of a container, in and out of the hold of a ship, in and out of warehouses, etc., without spilling a drop. Maybe that's why the Italians tend to use upright rather than flat boxes...

[Brad Ballinger]

All screw cap jokes aside, yes, I've seen this happen on more than one occasion. . . (they've always been Italian wines, btw). . .

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My only experience with this was also with an Italian wine. Not my bottle, but I was present when a dining companion opened his 1959 Antoniolo Gattinara and found no cork. With such an old bottle, at first we thought the cork maybe fell into the bottle. Upon emptying it, however, there was no cork. The fill level was unaffected, and the wine was quite good.

[bobferdon]

yes it has happened to me before... very rare though.

[andiesenji]

I have never come across a missing cork but several years ago I did find something extra when I pulled the foil off a bottle of Taittinger and found the tip of a leather glove under the wire cap.

I don't drink alcohol but the others there who had been drinking, found this rather hilarious. There was considerable speculation about how it got there and what happend to the remainder of the glove.

[Rebel Rose]

Yes, it does indeed happen, and it has nothing to do with the quality of the wine--it can occur in any bottling. The bottles move through the line fairly quickly and every once in a great while a bottle slides through without a cork. Foils are then slipped over the bottles by hand, so theoretically the line foilers should be able to spot an open bottle and pull it off the line, but more often than not they're chattering away in Spanish about their boyfriends.

[markk]

I guess machinery errors are not just limited to bottling wine. I once bought a bottle of black truffle oil (an excellent brand I'd had many times before) that had no truffle essence - it was plain oil. When I contacted them, they said that indeed they'd had a batch where the truffle essence part wasn't injected into the oil, but they thought none of them had been shipped.