Wine Bores and the Great Cork Taint Conspiracy

I was having dinner the other night with a winery rep and another wine writer when I ventured the opinion that not only are natural corks better today than they were just a few years ago, but that the cork taint problem had been overstated. Fifty percent? Fifteen percent? Even five or ten percent was higher than my experience suggested, I said.

 

“Well, maybe you just can’t detect TCA,” my wine writing “colleague” smirked, referring to the chemical compound that causes cork taint.

 

SLAM! BAM! Down for the count! I had stepped in front of an oncoming locomotive, grabbed the third rail, whatever corny metaphor you want to use. I stammered that of course I can detect TCA, but it was no use. I had set myself up, and had no choice but to swallow hard and nurse my humiliation through the rest of the meal.

But here’s the rub: Any self-respecting wine bore (is there any other kind?) believes he is expert at detecting minute amounts of cork taint. There is an incentive to exaggerate the problem because no one wants to be vulnerable to the “you can’t detect TCA” insult.

 

I’m not saying cork taint doesn’t exist. I’m merely suggesting that oenomachismo, the dark side of wine appreciation, may lead poseurs to overstate it in order to “prove” their wine tasting prowess and their own vinous superiority.

And well, I guess I’m saying, don’t have dinner with wine writers. They’re such bores.

 

We tasted seven wines with dinner. All had been sealed with natural cork, with nary a trace of cork taint. Yet somehow, they all tasted off to me. Perhaps nothing pairs well with bile.

Comments

[fotorules]

I believe that every wine fault has been rolled up into corked bottle detection ... bad wine, poorly stored wine, bottle variation, mood of the drinker. I remember one wine judging event when the judges sent back the bottle as corked and the winery had used a synthetic stopper. It is easy to have one evil cause of all problems. And yes, there is the occasional corked bottle.

[Dave McIntyre]

Good point, fotorules. Cork taint is the most prominent fault, and perhaps the easiest to detect, despite what my colleague said at dinner the other night. After all, who hasn't smelled a moldy basement at some point in life?

As for wine judges - of course, bottles can be rejected for any number of reasons, and it is still possible for a wine with a synthetic closure to have TCA. At a recent competition I judged, my table of five judges unanimously rejected both bottles of an entry three separate times. I later learned that all three entries were from the same winery. That place definitely has a problem.

Cheers,
Dave Mc